The UGF Servo medm page has been updated to reflect the last changes, namely the return of the sum of squares and the disappearance of Test3.

[Jenne, Diego]

Tonight we continued following the plan of last night: perform the transition of CARM to REFL11_I while on MICH offset at -25%:

• we managed to do the transition several times, keeping the UGF servos on for MICH and PRCL but turning off the DARM and CARM ones, because their contribution was rather unimportant and we feared that their excitations could affect negatively the other loops (as loops tend to see each other's excitation lines);
• we had to tweak the MICH and PRCL UGF servos:
  • the excitation frequency for MICH was lowered to ~41 Hz, while PRCL's one was lowered to ~50 Hz;
  • PRCL's amplitude was lowered to 75 because it was probably too high and it affected the CARM loop, while MICH's one was increased to 300 because during the reduction of the CARM offset it was sinking into the noise; after a few tries we can say they don't need to be tweaked on the fly during the procedure but can be kept fixed from the beginning;
  • after the transition to REFL11_I for CARM, we engaged also its UGF servo, still at the highest frequency of the lot (~115 Hz) and with relatively low amplitude (2), to help keeping the loop stable;
  • as DARM was still on ALS, we didn't engage its UGF servo during or after the transition, but we just hold its output from the initial part of the locking sequence (after we lowered its frequency to 100 Hz;
• however, at CARM offset 0 our arm power was less that what we had yesterday: we managed to get higher than ~8, but after Koji tweaked the MC alignment we reached ~10; we still don't understand the reason of the big difference with respect to what the simulations show for MICH offset at 25% (arm power ~50);
• after the CARM transition to REFL11_I we felt things were pretty stable, so we tried to reduce the MICH offset to get us in the ~ -10% range, however we never managed to get past ~ -15% before losing lock, at arm power around 20;
• we lost lock several times, but for several different reasons (IMC lost lock a couple of times, PRCL noise increased/showed some ringing, MICH railed) but our main concern is with the PRCL loop:
  • we took several measurements of the PRCL loop: the first one seemed pretty good, and it had a bigger phase bubble than usual; however, the subsequent measurements showed some weird shapes we struggle to find a reason for; these measurements were taken at different UGF frequencies, so maybe it is worth looking for some kind of correlation; morever, in the two weird measurements the UGFs are not where they are supposed to be, even if the servo was correctly following the input (or so it seemed); the last measurement was interrupted just before we lost lock because of PRCL itself;
  • we noticed a few times during the night that the PRCL loop noise in the 300-500 Hz range increased suddenly and we saw some ringing; at least a couple of times it was PRCL who threw us out of lock; this frequency range is similar to the 'weird' range we found in our measurements, so we definitely need to keep an eye on PRCL on those frequencies;
• in conclusion, the farthest we got tonight was CARM on REFL11_I at 0 offset, DARM at 0 offset still on ALS and MICH at ~ 15% offset, arm power ~20.

[Diego, Jenne]

We just changed the input to the CM board from REFL11 to AS55.

[Diego, Jenne]

Tonight we worked on the CM board and AO path:

• at first we changed the REFL1 input to the CM board from REFL11 to AS55, as written in my previous elog; we tried following Koji's procedures from http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/9500 but we didn't get any result: we could lock using the regular digital path but no luck at all for the analog path;
• then we decided to follow the procedure to the letter, using POY11Q as input to the CM board;
  • we still couldn't lock following the Path #2, even after adjusting the gains to match the current configuration for the Yarm filter bank;
  • we had some more success using Path #1, but we had to lower the REFL1 Gain to ~3-4 (from the original 31) because of the different configuration of the Yarm filter bank, in order to have the same sensing in both of them; we managed to acquire lock a few times, it's not super stable but it can keep lock for a while;
  • when we tried to increase the gain of the MC filter bank and the AO Gain, however, we immediately had some gain peaking, and we couldn't go further then 0.15 and 9db respectively. We currently don't have an answer for that.
  • anyhow, we took a few measurements with the SR785:

The BLUE plot is at MC Gain = 0.10 and REFL1 Gain = 4dB; the GREEN plot is for MC Gain = 0.10 and REFL1 Gain = 3dB, which seemed a more stable configuration; after this last configuration, we increased the MC Gain to 0.15 and the AO Gain from 8dB to 9dB and took another measurement, the RED plot; this is as far as we got as of now. We also couldn't increase the REFL11 Gain because it made things unstable and more prone to unlock.

So, some little progress on the AO path procedure, but we are very low on our UGF and we have to find a way to increase our gains without breaking the lock and avoiding the gain peaking we have witnessed tonight.

Notes:

• is the REFL1 Gain dB slider supposed to go to negative dBs? During the night we also tried to use negative dBs, but it seemed it wasn't doing anything instead;
• when we plugged POY11Q to the CM board, we noticed that it wasn't connected to anything at the moment; since we phase rotate POY11, we were assuming that we were using that signal somewhere. We are confused by this...
• we remind that REFL11 is no more connected to the CM board input, as POY11 is.

[Diego, Jenne, Eric]

Tonight we kept on following our current strategy for locking the PRFPMI:

• the first few tries were pretty unsuccessful: the PRMI lock wasn't much stable, and we never managed to reduce CARM offset to zero before losing lock;
• then we did some usual manteinance: we fixed the X arm green beatnote, fixed the phase tracker and given much attention to ASS alignment, since the X arm wasn't doing great;
• the last few locks were consintently better: we managed to get to CARM offset zero "easily", but the arm power was not very high (~8);
• then we tried to transition CARM to REFL11, both with the usual configuration and using CM_SLOW, using REFL11 as input for the Common Mode Board;
  • with the usual configuration, we lost lock right after the transition, because of MICH hitting the rail;
  • we did a very smooth CARM transition directly to REFL11 on the CM_SLOW path; we managed to take a spectrum with the SR785, but we couldn't take any more measurements before losing lock because of some weird glitch, as we can see from the lockloss plot;
• another thing that helped tonight was changing the ELP of the MICH filter bank: it went from 4th order to 6th order, and from 40 dB suppression to 60 dB suppression;

both of the last two locks, the most stable ones (one transition to usual REFL11 and one transition to "CM_SLOW" REFL11) were acquired actuating on MC2;

EDITs by JCD:  At least one of the times that we lost PRMI lock (although kept CARM and DARM lock on ALS), was due to MICH hitting the rail, even after we increased the limiter to 15,000 counts.

 Here is the transfer function between CARM ALS (CARM_IN1) and REFL11 coming through the CM board (CARM_B), just before we transitioned over.  Coherence was taken simultaneously as usual, I just printed it to another sheet.

CARM_3Feb2015_CarmBwasCMslow_CarmAwasLiveALS.pdf

CARM_3Feb2015_CarmBwasCMslow_CarmAwasLiveALS_Coh.pdf

Here is the lockloss plot for the very last lockloss.  This is the time that we were sitting on REFL11 coming through the CM_SLOW path.  A DTT transfer function measurement was in progress (you can see the sine wave in the CARM input and output data), but I think we actually lost lock due to whatever this glitch was near the right side of the plots.  This isn't something that I've seen in our lockloss plots before.  I'm not sure if it's coming from REFL11, or the CM board, or something else.  We know that the CM board gives glitches when we are changing gain settings, but that was not happening at this time.

Q: Here's the SR785 TF of CARM locked through CM board, but still only digital control; nothing exciting. Excitation amplitude was only 1mV, which explains the noisy profile. 

[Diego, Eric]

Tonight was a sad night... We continued to pursue our strategy, but with very poor results:

• before doing anything, we made sure we had a good initial configuration: we renormalized the arm powers, retuned the X arm green beatnote, did extensive ASS alignment;
• since the beginning of the night we faced a very uncooperative PRMI, which caused a huge number of locklosses, often just by itself, without even managing to reduce the MICH offset before reducing the CARM one;
• we had to reduce the PRCL gain to -0.002 in order to acquire PRMI lock, but keeping it such or restoring it to -0.004 once lock was acquired either didn't improve the PRMI stability at all;
• we also tweaked a bit the PRCL and MICH UGF servos (namely, their frequencies to ~80 Hz and ~40 Hz respectively) and that seemed to help earlier during the night, but not much longer;
• we only managed to transition CARM to REFL11 via CM SLOW twice;
  • the first time we lost lock almost immediately, probably because of a non-optimal offset between CARM A and B;
  • the second time we managed to stay there a little longer, but then some spike in the PRCL loop and/or the MICH loop hitting the rails threw us out of lock (see the lockloss plot);
  • both times we transitioned at arm power ~18;
• during the night we used an increased analog ASDC whitening gain, as from Eric's elog here http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/10972 ; even with this fix, though, MICH is still often hitting the rails and causing the lock losses;
• the conclusion for tonight is that we need to figure what is going on with the PRMI...

[Diego, Jenne]

We kept struggling with the PRMI, although it was a little better than yesterday:

• we retuned the X Green beatnote;
• we managed to reach lower CARM offsets than yesterday night, but we still can't keep lock long enough to perform a smooth transition to CM SLOW/REFL11;
• we tweaked MICH a bit:
  • the ELP in FM8 now is always on, because it seems to help;
  • we tried using a new FM1 1,1:0,0 instead of FM2 1:0 because we felt we needed a little more gain at low frequencies, but unfortunately this didn't change much MICH's behaviour;
  • now, after catching PRMI lock, the MICH limiter is raised to 30k (in the script), as a possible solution for the railing problem; the down/relock scripts take care of resetting it to 10k while not locked/locking;

So, still no exciting news, but PRMI lock seems to be improving a little.

I forgot to elog about these ones, my bad... The new/updated laptops are giada, viviana and paola; paola is already in the lab, while giada and viviana are in the control room waiting for a new home. The Pool of Names Wiki page has already been updated to reflect the changes.

I wrote the script with the recipe we used, using the Yarm and AS55 on the IN2 of the CM board; however, the steps where the offset should be reduced are not completely deterministic, as we saw that the initial offset (and, therefore, the following ones) could change because of different states we were in. In the script I tried to "servo" the offset using C1:LSC-POY11_I_MON as the reference, but in the comments I wrote the actual values we used during our best test; the main points of the recipe are:

• misalign the Xarm and the recycling mirrors;
• setting up CARM_B for POY11 locking and enabling it;
• setting up CARM_A for CM_SLOW;
• setting up the CM_SLOW filter bank, with only FM1 and FM4 enabled;
• setting up the CARM filter bank: FM1 FM2 FM6 triggered, only FM3 and FM5 on; usual CARM gain = 0.006;
• setting up CARM actuating on MC2;
• turn off the violin filter FM6 for MC2;
• setting up the default configuration for the Common Mode Servo and the Mode Cleaner Servo; along with all the initial parameters, here is where the initial offset is set;
• turn on the CARM output and, then, enable LSC mode;
• wait until usual POY11 lock is acquired and, a bit later, transition from CARM_B to CARM_A;
• then, the actual CM_SLOW recipe:
  • CM_AO_GAIN = 6 dB;
  • SUS-MC2_LSC FM6 on (the 300:80 filter);
  • CM_REFL2_GAIN = 18 dB;
  • servo CM_REFL_OFFSET;
  • CM_AO_GAIN = 9 dB;
  • CM_REFL2_GAIN = 21 dB;
  • servo CM_REFL_OFFSET;
  • CM_REFL2_GAIN = 24 dB;
  • servo CM_REFL_OFFSET;
  • CM_REFL2_GAIN = 27 dB;
  • servo CM_REFL_OFFSET;
  • CM_REFL2_GAIN = 31 dB;
  • servo CM_REFL_OFFSET;
  • CM_AO_GAIN = 6 dB;
  • SUS-MC2_LSC FM7 on (the :300 compensating filter);

I tried the procedure and it seems fine, as it did during the tries Q and I made; however, since it touches many things in many places, one should be careful about which state the IFO is into, before trying it.

The script is in scripts/CM/CM_Servo_OneArm_CARM_ON.py and in the SVN.

Elog crashed a couple times, restarted it a couple times.

Using the updated AOI's for the LO path: (4.8, 47.9, 2.9, 4.5) deg for (LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4), we obtain the following results. 

First two plots are scattering plots for the t and s planes, respectively. Note that here we have changed to 0.5% fractional RoC error and 3 mm positional error. We have also changed the meaning of the colors: pink:MM>0.98; olive 0.95<MM<=0.98, and grey MM<=0.95. It seems that both planes would benefit statistically if we make the LO3-LO4 distance longer by a few mm. 

We also consider how much we could compensate for the MM error in the last plot. We have a few mm window to make both planes better than 0.95. 

By adjusting the PMC steering mirrors, Jenne and I realigned the PMC input beam. Transmission is at 0.829 now. 

[Jenne, Eric]

We installed a Half Wave Plate -> Polarized Beam Splitter -> Half Wave Plate in the PSL beam line, immediately after the EOM, to be used for attenuating the beam when we vent, as in Entry 6892.

It was illuminating to discover that the optics labeled QWP0-1064-10-2 are indeed half wave plates, instead of quarter wave plates as QWP suggests. 

The PBS transmits "P"/Horizontal polarization, but the beam coming from the EOM is "S"/Vertically polarized, and we want to keep that, since we do not want the beam attenuated quite yet. 

So, we use the HWP to rotate the P from the EOM to S, so that the majority of the power passes through the PBS. The second HWP then rotates the transmitted S back into P, which continues to the mode cleaner. When we want to attenuate, we will simply rotate the first HWP to change the proportion of S polarized light that will pass straight through the PBS and towards the mode cleaner. 

After setting the proper HWP angles, we aligned the PBS via minimizing the MC reflection.

Since we have not yet attenuated the power, we have not yet changed the BS for the MC reflection, since this would damage the PD. The beam splitter will be changed out for a 100% reflectivity mirror to increase the power to the PD when we do.

We have now reduced the power being input to the MC from 1.25W to 10mW, and changed out the MC refl BS for a mirror. 

The power was reduced via the PBS we introduced in Entry 7295.

While we were in there, we took a look at the AS beam, which was looking clipped on the monitor. Jenne felt that it appears that the clipping seems to be occurring inside the vacuum, possibly on the faraday. This will be investigated during the vent. 

 [Steve, Eric]

I've been helping Steve vent this morning. The following things were done (from Steve's logbook):

• Particle counts: 0.5 micron particles, 4200 counts per cubic ft
• Vertex crane drive checked to be ok
• Optical Levers set for local damping only
• Saved some screens
• PSL shutter and green shutters closed
• HV Off checked, JAM nuts checked
• Vac: Close V1, VM1, ans - VA6, open VM3 - RGA, cond: chamber open mode
• 8AM: VV1 open to N2, regulator set  to 14 psi
• 8:23AM: 35psi Instrument grade Air

(At this point, I took over the air canisters, while Steve made preparations around the lab. 

• 9:00AM: 2nd air cylinder, 14 psi 
• 9:40AM: 3rd air cyl
• 10:20AM: 4th air cyl
• 11:00AM: 5th air cyl

With the 5th cylinder, we began approaching 1 atm, so we slowed the regulator down to 5psi. Around 750 torr, Steve opened VV1 to air.

According to Steve, we will be at atmospheric pressure at  ~12:30pm.

 The power has been increased to 20mW. We got the 10mW number from the linked elog entry above. However, after venting we were having problems locking the MC. Upon investigating past elog posts, we found that 20mW was actually the power used in the past. The MC will now autolock. 

 I adjusted the PMC alignment this morning, brought the transmission up to 0.83V.

After the lunch meeting, we found the the MC transmission was higher than recently seen. Turned out the HWP had drifted, causing 30mW to be input to the MC. I adjusted it back down to 20mW. 

 [ericq, mikej, some input from zach]

After realigning the MC, the measurement was repeated this afternoon. This time, however, we isolated the beam from ITMY by misaligning ITMX. The beam looked somewhat elliptical to me, and Mike should have fits up tonight. Afterwards, ITMX was returned to the position I found it in, and the PMC shutter and access connector were closed. (Sorry about last night!)

 [Q, Chloe]

Chloe has been to the lab twice to start up her investigations in acoustic noise coupling to mirrors. The general idea for the setup is a HeNe laser bouncing off a mirror and onto a QPD, whose signal provides a measure of beam displacement noise. The mirror will be mounted and excited in various ways to make quantitative conclusions about the quality of different mounting schemes.

We have set up the laser+mirror+QPD on the SP table, and collected data via SR560s->SR785, with the main aim of evaluating the suitability of this setup. The data we collected is not calibrated to any meaningful units (yet). For now, we are just using QPD volts.

Chloe collected data of vertical displacement noise for the following schemes: Terminated SR785 input, Terminated SR560 inputs, Laser centered directly onto the QPD, Laser shining on mirror centered on QPD, laser/mirror/qpd with some small desktop speakers producing white noise from http://www.simplynoise.com. Data shown below. 

 My job right now is to characterize the green PDH loops on each arm. Today, Jenne took me around and pointed at the optics and electronics involved. She then showed me how to lock the green beams to the arms (i.e. opening the shutters until you hit a TM00 shape on the transmitted beam camera). Before lunch, the y arm was easiest to lock, and the transmitted power registered at around 0.75. 

After lunch, I took a laptop and SR785 down to the y end station. I unhooked the PDH electronics and took a TF of the servo (without its boost engaged, which is how it is currently running) and noise spectrum with the servo input terminated.

I then set up things a la ELOG 8817 to try and measure the OLTF. However, at this point, getting the beam to lock on a TM00 (or something that looked like it) was kind of tough. Also, the transmitted power was quite a bit less than earlier (~0.35ish), and some higher order modes were higher than that (~0.5). Then, when I would turn on the SR785 excitation, lock would be lost shortly into the measurement, and the data that was collected looked like nonsense. Later, Koji noted that intermittent model timeouts were moving the suspensions, thus breaking the lock. 

We then tried to lock the x arm green, to little success. Koji came to the conclusion that the green input pointing was not very good, as the TM00 would flash much less brightly than some of the much higher order modes. 

Tomorrow, I will measure the x arm OLTF, as it doesn't face the same timeout issue that is affecting the y arm.

Yesterday, made a slew of measurements on the X-arm when locked on green. By tweaking the temperature loop offset and the green input PZT pointing, I was able to get the transmitted green to around 1.0. The PDH board gain was set to 4.0. I had trouble making swept sine measurements of the OLTF; changing the excitation amplitude for different frequency ranges would result in discontinuities in the measured TF, and there was only a pretty narrow band around the UGF that seemed to have reasonable coherence.

So, I used the SR785 as a broadband noise generator and measured the TF via dividing the spectra in regions of coherence. Specifically, I used the "pink noise" option of the SR785. I also used a SR560 as a low pass to get enough noise injected into the lower frequency range to be coherent, while not injecting so much into the higher frequencies that the mode hopped while measuring. 

The servo board TF was easily fitted to a 4th order zpk model via VFIT, but I'm having trouble fitting the OLTF. (There is a feature in the servo TF that I didn't fit. This is a feature that Zach saw [ELOG 9537], and attributed to op amp instability) Plots follow. Also, while these need to be calibrated to show the real noise spectrum of the cavity motion, I'm attaching the voltage noise spectra of the error and control signals as a check that electronics/PD noise isn't dominating either signal. 

With the newly repaired PDH board, I spent some time with the x arm green PDH loop. I found it SO MUCH EASIER to measure the OLTF by injecting before the servo, instead of after it. (i.e. I added a swept sine from the SR785 to the mixer output (error signal) before the servo input). This is likely because the error signal is much flatter. I used a 10mV excitation across the whole frequency range (30-100kHz). 

Here's the OLTF. I'm working on fitting it and breaking it up into its constituent TFs, then making a rudimentary noise budget. 

 [ericq,Gabriele]

So, we want an relatively quick measurement of the PRC length error (with sign!) at the order of .5 centimeter or so. Rana suggested the "demodulation phase method," i.e. lock the simple Michelson, measure what demodulation phase brings the 1F signal entirely within the phase quadrature, then lock the PRMI and measure the demodulation phase again. This tells you something about the length of the PRC. 

Gabriele and I worked through a simulation using MIST to determine how to actually do this. We simulated the case of injecting a line at 1kHz in the laser frequency via the laser's PZT and looking at the transfer function of the 1kHz signal to the I and Q at the 1F AS demodulated signal when locked. (Michelson locked on the dark fringe, PRC locked on 11MHz sideband) With the I and Q in hand, we can measure some demodulation phase angle that would bring everything into I. 

When the PRC length is in the ideal location, the demodulation phases in the two cases are the just about the same. Sweeping the length of the PRC around the ideal length gives us a monotonic function in the difference in the demodulation phases:

So, with this simulation, we should be able to calibrate a measured difference in demod phase into the length error of the cavity! We will proceed and report...

[ericq, Gabriele, Manasa]

 We wanted to perform the PRC length measurement today with an AS11 signal, but such a signal didn't exist. So, we have temporarily connected the AS110 PD signal (which is some Thorlabs PD, and not a resonant one) into the REFL11 demod board. 

We then proceeded with the goal of locking the PRC with REFL165. A few parameters that were changed along the way as we aligned and locked things:

• the XARM gain was increased from 0.4 to 0.5 to help it acquire lock
• the MICH gain was decreased from -10 to -5 since there was some gain peaking in its servo output
• the REFL165 demodulation phase was changed from 155 to 122, to place a PRCL excitation entirely within I (we did this while locked on the carrier)

Sadly, in the end, we couldn't lock the PRC on a sideband in a stable manner. The alignment would drift faster than we could optimize the alignment and gains for the PRC. I.e. we would lock the PRC on the carrier, align PRM (and maybe touch ITMX) to maximize POPDC, switch to sideband locking, try to lock, and things would start looking misaligned. Switching back to carrier locking, the beam spots on REFL (for example) would have moved.

Manasa noted the MC_TRANS_Y has been substantially drifting along with small drift in MC_TRANS_P as well. So we need to fix the source of the mode cleaner beam drifting if we want to make this measurement. 

[ericq,Jenne]

Since we don't have agreement between the measurements we made the other day and the earlier estimations, I wanted to repeat the demodulation angle measurement. We had to do a few things to keep the PRMI locked, since in the last few days, it hasn't been stable enough.

The mode cleaner had been very fussy lately; the WFS were pushing in a way that caused fast oscillations of the transmission and reflection powers. I turned off the servos, manually aligned the mode cleaner to transmission of about 15k and refl of about .4, centered the beams on the WFS QPDs, and turned the loops back on. Things were much stable after that. Also, Jenne noticed that the PMC loop had walked the laser PZT temperature to a bad place, and fixed it.

After aligning the carrier locked PRMI, the last piece needed to get things stable enough for sideband locking was turning off the angular damping on the PRM suspension screen (this was turned back on when we were done). Waiting until evening noise levels probably helped too. We used a 1000 count MICH excitation in the PRMI case, and recorded data for about a minute in one degree steps around the demodulation phase that looked to put the excitation entirely within the Q of the PD. Also, we notched out the excitation frequency in the MICH servo bank for today's measurement; I think it's outside of the loop bandwidth anyways, but it's good to be sure. 

Jenne and I pondered a bit whether changing the AS55 demodulation phase while it (AS55 Q) is being used as the MICH control signal introduces subtleties that we haven't anticipated, but couldn't come up with anything concrete. Changing the angle from the what maximizes the Q just looks like a slight change in MICH gain, and shouldn't affect the phase of the excitation signal on the PD...

In any case, the data have been recorded, and the results will follow soon. 

I replaced the stupid broken fancy button with a simple sturdy switch. I had to file out the hole in the chassis a bit, but the switch is pressed in tightly and securely. I put the box back in the rack, but the power cable was coming directly from the power supplies with no fuses. The box was drawing ~.9 and 1.5 Amps from two supplies, so I put 2A fuses on both. Plugged everything back in, and the mode cleaner locks, so it looks like all is well.

RXA: When its so close, I prefer to size it up by 1 step. Please change to 5A fuses. Otherwise, we may blow them from power glitches.

Q: 5A fuses have been swapped in

[Manasa, ericq]

Both arms have been aligned via ASS. PRC locked on carrier.

SB locking hasn't happened yet...

Details:

• Aligned MC at low power, measured spots
• Found ITMX AS, REFL spots on cameras. Couldn't find ITMY spot. Found x-arm flashes with PRM aligned.
• MC Refl Y1 mirror was replaced with the 90:10 BS; blocked WFS path until MC was aligned
• PMC power was increased (~1.4W directly before PSL shutter)
• Touched up MC alignment, reactivated high power autolocker, measured spots.
• Locked x-arm on IR, ran ASS
• Found ITMY spot on AS camera, locked y-arm, ran ASS on both arms
• Checked green beams. Y-arm locks at around .6, X-arm at around .2 (input steering needs adjustment)
• Centered beams on WFS, reset filter bank offsets, turned on WFS
• Aligned PRM, locked PRC on carrier.
• Tried locking PRC on sideband, had troubles. Looks like there is some increased seismic activity; might be the culprit.

[ericq]

PRC Locked on Sidebands

Jenne reminded me that if we change a cavity, phases can change... So, first, I locked the PRC on the carrier, and then gave it MICH and PRCL excitations to optimize the AS55 and REFL55 phase rotation angles by looking at the excitation demodulated outputs of the unused quadrature (i.e. we want all of MICH to be in AS55 Q, so I rotated the phase until C1:CAL-SENSMAT_MICH_AS55_I_I_OUTPUT was zero on average).

This resulted in:

• AS55: 7 -> -5.5
• REFL55: 73 -> 86.9

I then used the same settings as in ELOG 9554, except I used -1s instead of +1s for the POP110I trigger matrix elements. (I'm not sure why this is different, but I noticed that the PRC would lock on carrier with positive entries here, so I figured we wanted the peaks with opposite sign).

So far, it seems more stable than when we were doing the demodulation phase measurements, it's been locked for >15 minutes without me having to tweak the gains or the alignment from the carrier locked case.

Adjusted the angles as Jenne suggested:

• POP22: 105 -> 163
• POP110: 150 -> -83

[ericq]

Today, I kicked the PRM to see the sideband splitting in POP110. 

First, we can qualitatively see we moved in the right direction! (See ELOG 9490)

I fit the middle three peaks to a sum of two Lorentzian profiles ( I couldn't get Airy peaks to work... but maybe this is ok since I'm just going to use the location parameter?), and looked at the sideband splitting as a fraction of the FSR, in the same way as in Gabriele's ELOG linked above.

This gave: c / (4 * f55) * (dPhi / FSR) = 0.014 +- .001 

Since the PRC length with simultaneous resonance (to 1mm) is given by c / (4 * f11) = 6.773, this means our length is either 6.759m or 6.787m (+- .001). Given the measurement in ELOG 9588, I assume that we are on the short side of the simultaneous resonance. Thus

The sideband splitting observed from this kick indicates a PRC length of 6.759m +- 1mm

 [ericq]

Steve fixed the PRM oplev pointing. I turned on the loops and measured the OLG, then set the pitch and yaw gains such that the upper UGF was ~8Hz (motivated by Jenne's loop design in ELOG 9401)

• Pitch gain: +7
• Yaw Gain: -5

I then measured the oplev spectra of the optics as they were aligned for PRMI. (OSEMs on, oplevs on, LSC off, and ASC off)

Next, Jenne and I need to fix the ASC loop such that it properly accounts for the oplev loop. 

 [Quick post, will follow up with further detail later. Excuse my sleepy ELOG writing]

Goal: Check out the transmon QPD signal chain; see if whitening works. Assess noise for 1/sqrt(TRX/Y) use. 

First impression: Whitening would not switch on when toggling the de-whitening. The front monitors on the whitening boards are misleading; they are taken a few stages before the real output. ADC noise was by far the limiting noise source. 

I updated the binary logic in the c1scx and c1scy to actually make the binary IO module output some bits. 

After consulting a secret wiring diagram on the wiki, not linked on the rack information page (here), I worked out which bits correspond to the bypass switches in the whitening board ( a fairly modified D990399, with some notes here)

Now, FM1 and FM2 (dewhitening filters on the ETM QPD quadrants) trigger the corresponding whitening in the boards. Here's a quick TF I took of the quadrant 1 board at ETMY. (I should take a whitening+dewhitening TF too, and post it here...)

Seems to roughly work. Some features may be due to non-accounted for elements in the anti-imaging of the DAC channels I used for the excitation, or such things. The board likely needs some attention, and at least a survey of what is there. 

I also need to take dark noise data, and convert into the equivalent displacement noise in the 1/sqrt(TRX/Y) error signals. For the no-whitening ADC noise, I estimated ~1pm RMS noise on a 38pm linewidth of PRFPMI arms. 

My apologies for all of that crap I left at the Y-end... I cleaned the rest of it up today. 

I took transfer functions of the four ETMY QPD whitening channels today. (Attempted the ETMX ones too, but had troubles driving the board; detailed below). I've attached a zip with the DTT xml files for the cases of no whitening / 1 whitening stage / both whitening stages engaged. Here's a plot of both whitening stages engaged. 

Given the way I measured, the DAC output anti-imaging is in the TFs as well. ( This is a D000186 board; with something like a 4th order elliptic LP, but I need to look at the board / fit the TF to see the parameters, there are different revisions with different filter shapes.) 

The c1scy model had excitation blocks on some of the unused DAC channels (C1:SCY-XXX_CHAN9 etc.), but these were in the second DAC output connection, and not cabled up. However, the 8th channel on the DAC had no connection in the simulink model, so I added another excitation block there (C1:SCY-XXX_CHAN8), and used the anti-imaging front panel lemo connector to drive the input of the whitening board. 

I also added a similar channel to the SCX model, but no data would show up in the channel as viewed by data viewer (though the channel name was black), or in analog world. There's the additional weirdness that the SCY excitation channels show up under SCX in DTT and awggui... I'm not entirely sure what's going on here.

I still need to look at the noise, and peek inside the boards, to check for homemade modifications and see if there are bad things like thick film resistors that may be spoiling the noise performance...

 Q EDIT: THIS IS WRONG. I LOCKED PRC ON THE CARRIER

 As Koji measured the other day: MICH and PRCL seem very degenerate in the 3f REFL PDs. 

I'm using this as a motivation to do some simulation in MIST and try to understand the best way to implement the 3F locking scheme. Hopefully my thinking below isn't nonsense...

First, I modeled the PRC with no arm cavities and the estimated cavity length I got with the PRM kick measurement, and looked at the REFL sensing matrix.

This agrees with the observed degeneracy. I then modeled the case of the PRC length that gives coincident SB resonance, again with no arm cavities.

Now there is good separation in REFL165. (REFL33 still looks pretty degenerate, however). This raised the question, "What does the angle between MICH and PRCL in REFL165 do as a function of macroscopic PRC length?" 

• We see ~90 degrees at coincident resonance
• Shortening the cavity, which we did to account for the arms, quickly shrinks the angle
• Presuming we moved to make the cavity 4cm shorter implies we had ~45 degrees between MICH and PRCL in REFL165 before the move. (Is this consistent with earlier observations?)

To me, this implies that locking the PRC on 3F from scratch won't be simple. However, the whole point of the PRC length choice is to have coincident SB resonance when the arms are resonating.

So: even if we're not spot on, we should be relatively close to the PRC length where having arms resonant gives us simultaneously resonant upper and lower sidebands, where MICH and PRCL should be orthogonal-ish. I.e. building up a little bit of IR power in the arms may start to break the degeneracy, perhaps allowing us to switch from 1F to 3F locking, and then continue reducing the CARM offset. 

So, I ultimately want to model the effect of arm power buildup on the angle between MICH and PRCL in the 3f PDs. This is what I'm currently working on. 

So far, I have reproduced some of the RC modeling results on the wiki to make sure I model the arms correctly. (I get 37.7949 m as the ideal arm length for a modulation freq of 11.066134 MHz vs. 37.7974m for 11.065399 MHz as stated on the wiki). Next, I will confirm the desired PRC length that accounts for the arms, and then look at the MICH vs PRCL angle in the REFL PDs as a function of arm power or detuning. 

 Q EDIT: THIS IS WRONG. I LOCKED PRC ON THE CARRIER

Koji noted oddities in the sensing matrix results I had gotten; namely that the plots showed REFL33 not changing at all, when we know for a fact that this should not be the case. 

Gabriele lent his eyes to my code, and came up with the idea that the modulation depths I was using were maybe not ideal (.1 for both 11 and 55). This affects REFL33 in that it is not simply Carrier * 33Mhz + 11Mhz * -22Mhz but also 22MHz * 55MHz, etc. 

I got more realistic values from Jenne (0.19 for 11MHz and .26 for 55Mhz) and re-ran the code, with more realistic results. The behavior for 165 has remained the same, but the other signals are more well behaved. 

Moral of the story: the modulation depths affect the 3f signals in a complicated way.

Disregard previous ELOGs, I had the PRC locked on carrier 

Locked on the sideband, the MICH / PRCL angle is much less sensitive to the PRC length, and shouldn't in fact be as degenerate as we've seen in reality. 

So, my simulations no longer provide any reason for the 3F signals to be so degenerate. 

EQ UPDATE: Measured it wrong the first time, fixed now.

I measured the spectra of the SQRTINV channels from dark QPDs, with offsets adjusted to imitate various transmission levels. (While the dark noise stays constant in terms of, say, TRX counts, 1/sqrt(TRX) isn't linear, and so the noise coupling depends on the TRX offset). 

I did some calculations to turn this into the equivalent displacement noise when using SQRTINV as an error signal. This depends on where on the fringe you are locking, since the slope of SQRTINV vs. position is not constant, and can only really be treated as linear down to about 1/3 of a line width away from full resonance. In my calculations, I assumed a coupled arm line width of 38pm, and a full transmission of 700 counts in TRX/Y. 

The QPD dark noise RMS when two line widths away (TR = 40) is about 5fm, and only goes down from there. 

After speaking with Jenne and Gabriele, I did a little bit of simulating based on my earlier code that looked at the angle of MICH vs. PRCL, just with cavity detuning instead of macroscopic length change.

The zero point in the following plots is with the PRC locked on the sideband. The PRC detuning was done by changing the PRM-BS microscopic length (in terms of phase), and the MICH detuning was done by adding half of the detuning to the BS-ITMY distance, and subtracting half of it from the BS-ITMX distance. 

This plot is in terms of radians, so to roughly relate it to line width, here's a plot of the POP powers as a function of the PRC detuning. 

 And glossing over the MICH offset, here's the PRC offset plots in displacement, rather than radians.

The simulation is actually slightly different now. I now use nominal ITM T values (T=.014) instead of the random R=.99 I had in place. 

(correction: Field Power should be Field Amplitude in the first plot)

I measured the arm cavity losses as Kiwamu did way back in ELOG 5074.

I used the same logic as the ../scripts/LSC/armloss script, but did it manually. This meant:

1. Lock and ASS-Align both arms. 
2. Misalign the ITM of the arm that I'm not measuring, to get its spot off of AS
3. Take 10 seconds of ASDC_OUT data while the arm is locked. 
4. Unlock, misalign ETM of arm of interest, take another 10 seconds of ASDC_OUT
5. Relock, run ASS, goto #3

Analysis was done similar to ../scripts/LSC/armloss.m. This uses the nominal T values (.014 and 15e-6) to estimate the input power from the unlocked ASDC data, and the cavity reflectivity from the locked ASDC / input power. Then, loss is calculated by:

• Pin = ASDC(unlocked) / R1
• Rc = ASDC(locked) / Pin
• rc=sqrt(Rc), etc.
• Loss = 1 - (( 1 / r1r2)) * ( 1 - t1^2 r2 / (r1 - rc)) ^2

I did this for pairs of locked / unlocked data stretches. (Subsequent pairs maybe have slightly different things going on, but each pair was taken within a minute or so of each other)

Unfortunately, during the X Arm measurements, the MC was misbehaving with large REFL fluctuations, so I don't have confidence the results.

The Y Arm data seems fine, however. 

The Y arm loss is 123.91 +/- 10.47 ppm 

(Trial-to-Trial fluctuations dominate the fluctuations within each trial by far, and their standard deviation is what I report as the random error above)

This seems roughly in agreement with old values I've seen in the ELOG. I'll remeasure the x arm tomorrow during the day. Here's a plot showing the ASDC values of the Y Arm measurements. 

At today's meeting, it was suspected that these noise levels were far too low. (ELOG 9660)

I've attached the math I did to get the conversions, as well as the dark noise SQRTINV spectra at various imitated transmission values and the python script that does the converting. 

I've gone over my calculations, and think they're self-consistent. However, a potential source of misestimation is the treatment of the Lorentzian profile simply existing with the coupled arm line width (38pm). The conversion to m/rtHz is directly proportional to the line width of the transmission peak, so if it is much broader in practice (because of imperfect PRC buildup or something), the noise will be that much worse.

I'm open to any other feedback about what I may have done wrong!

Using Koji's mathematica notebook, and Nic's python work, I set out to run a time domain simulation of the error signal, with band-limited white noise added in. 

Basically, I sweep the displacement of the cavity (with no noise), and pass it to the analytical formulae with the coefficients Koji used, with some noise added in. I also included some 1/0 protection for the linearized PDH signal. I ran a sweep, and then compared it to an ALS sweep that Jenne ran on Monday; reconstructing what the CESAR signal would have looked like in the sweep. 

The noise amounts were totally made up. 

They matched up very well, qualitatively! [Since the real sweep was done by a (relatively) noisy ALS, the lower noise of the real pdh signal was obscured.]

Given this good match, we were motivated to start trying to implement it on Monday. 

At this point, since we've gotten it working on the actual IFO, I don't plan on doing much more with this simulation right now, but it may come in handy in the future...

Two weeks ago (Feb 26) I took the "Q MON" output of the demodulator that sends its Q output to the MC servo board as the error signal, and connected it to an SR785, so we can occasionally monitor the error signal noise. (Also, I did not appropriately ELOG the fact I touched things...)

I'm working on an automated script to do the monitoring, but the wireless router that the SR785 is connected is wicked slow. I should run an ethernet cable to it...

I'm just figuring I'll look at the full span (~100kHz) spectrum every ten minutes, and compare it to some nominal spectrum from a known-good time, and the last few hours.

Speaking of the whitening board, I had neglected to post details showing the the whitening was at least having a positive effect on the transmon QPD noise. So, here is a spectrum showing the effects that the whitening stages have on a QPD dark noise measurement like I did in ELOG 9660, at a simulated transmission level of 40 counts. 

The first whitening stages gives us a full 20dB of noise reduction, while the second stage brings us down to either the dark noise of the QPD or the noise of the whitening board. We should figure out which it is, and fix up the board if necessary. 

The DTT xml file is attached in a zip, if anyone wants it.

 I've been getting a simulation going with the eventual goal of simulating CESAR-type signals for CARM. So for I've only been using MIST, though I'm still thinking about what to do for a fully time domain approach. (For example, maybe a mixture of simulink and analytical equations? We'll see how painful that gets...)

Anyways, with the parameters I have for the 40m, I've set up a simulation, where I can do things like a "static" CARM scan.

(i.e. PRMI perfectly locked. Ask what different PDs see if the arms were just statically sitting at some CARM offset)

PDH signals are there in the REFL diodes. The coupled line width here looks smaller than the ~40pm number I've heard before, so I should check my parameters. (Likely culprit, I'm using nominal R and T for the arm cavities)

I've also done the slightly more sophisticated thing of looking at the transfer function from CARM motion to different PDs, at different CARM offsets. For TRX and REFLDC, these seem to match up qualitatively to some plots that Kiwamu has done for aLIGO, with frequencies shifted by the relative arm length factor of 100. (Q's left, K's right, Y-axis on mine are W/m with 1W input the IFO)

We can also look at the PDH diodes (revised from my initial post. Had an error in my code): 

That's where I've gotten so far!

Extending the previous model, I've closed a rudimentary CESAR loop in simulink. Error signals with varying noise levels are combined to bring a "cavity" to lock.  

There are many things that are flat out arbitrary at this point, but it qualitatively works. The main components of this model are:

• The "Plant": A pendulum with f0 = 2Hz, Q = 10
• Some white force noise, low passed at 1Hz before input to the plant.
• The Controller: A very rough servo design that is stable...
• ALS signal: Infinite range Linear signal, with a bunch of noise
• Transmission and PDH signals are computed with some compiled C code containing analytic functions (which can be a total pain to get working), have less noise than ALS
• Some logic for computing linearized PDH and SqrtInv signals
• A C code block for doing the CESAR mixing, and feeding to the servo

And it can lock! 

Right now, all of the functions and noise levels are similar to the previous simulation, and therefore don't tell us anything about anything real...

However, at this point, I can tune the parameters and noise levels to make it more like our interferometer, and thus maybe actually useful. 

Incidentally, while messing around with transfer functions and sensing matrix elements this evening, I was able to sideband lock straight onto REFL33 I&Q.  The settings were all identical to Koji's ELOG, with the following differences:

Input ports:
REFL33   WHTN: 30dB demod phase +125.5deg (tweaked from 135.5 to minimize MICH in I)

Input matrix:

REFL33I x +1.0 -> PRCL
REFL33Q x +3.0 -> MICH

Servo:
MICH OFS 0 / Gain 1/ Limitter ON (Oscillations occurred at 1.3)
PRCL OFS 0 / Gain -0.04 / Limitter ON

Output matrix:

MICH ITMX -1.0 / ITMY 1.0
PRCL PRM 1.0