Then we can estimate the noises.

Measurement with ARMs

ITMX: 5.0843e-9 /f^2 [m/count]

ITMY: 4.9677e-9 / f^2 [m/count]

 In high frequency region there is the difference between xarm and yarm. These difference are already there in error signal. I'm not sure where these noise comes from. We will make measurement with Green PDH from tomorrow, so  we can also check with those measurement.

In other region the two noises are very close and also very similar to the plot of the seismic motion in the control room (attached on the front of TV screen).

 Measurement with FPMI

i)By locking the FPMI with AS55Q and arms using POX,POY we measured  the OLTF on AS55Q, the response from BS actuation to error signal on AS55Q  for H_mich. The fitted,  measured OLTF and the residual function is in attachment1. I fitted two parameters and they are time-delay and the gain. The time delay is -275 usec. The time delay in three different control are almost same. The response from BS to AS55Q is in attachment 2.

With these two measuremets, I calclated the H_mich in FPMI. This H_mich should be different from simple MI because the cavity  refrectivity is different from the front mirror. Acrually it changed and the value was
Hmich = 4.4026e7

ii) I excited the ETMX and ETMY and measure the response from actuation to the error signal of MICH on AS55Q. The response is in attachment 3 and 4. from these result I calculated the H_L-l by using the formula as I mentioned. The value was
H_Lx-l = 175.7650 (XARM)
H_Ly-l = 169.8451 (YARM)

iii) I measured the error signal of MICH and XARM and YARM and with measured H_L-l, I estimated the FPMI noise caused by ARM locking. You can see in the higher frequency region than 10 Hz is dominated by noise caused by ARM control in-loop noises. 150 Hz and 220Hz are the UGF of each arms, so the two peaks are caused by arm control. You can see the small difference between FPMI noise and  noise from arms. There are two possibilities, one is that these measurement is not same time measurement so they should have small difference. and  other possibility is the error of the caliculation. But I think it doesn't look so bad estimation.

Next step

We will do same measurement with lock the arms the ALS system on tomorrow. Then we will check the PDH servo or other noise source and investigate the ALS system

[Masayuki, Manasa]

While trying to lock the arms using ALS we found that the locks were not very stable and the in-loop noise was higher than seen before.

I looked into things and checked the out-of loop noise for ALS and found that the Y arm ALS noise (rms) was higher than the X arm.

To troubleshoot, I measured the OLTF of the phase tracking loop. While X arm was healthy, things weren't looking good for the Y arm. Sadly, the Y phase tracking loop gain was set too high with a phase margin of -2 degrees. We brought down the gain from 300 to 150 and set the phase margin close to ~55 degrees.

X arm Phase tracker loop:
UGF = 1.8 K Hz
Phase margin = 50 degrees

Y arm Phase tracker loop:
UGF = 1.6 KHz
Phase margin = 55 degrees

[Masayuki, Manasa]

I. ALS servo loops
After fixing things with the phase tracking loop, we checked if things were good with the ALS servo loops.
We measured the OLTF of the X and Y arm ALS servo loops. In both cases the phase margin was ~20 degrees. There was no room to set enough phase margin. So we looked at the servo filters. We tried to modify the filters so that we could bring enough phase margin, but could not get at it. So we put back the old filters as they were.

 attachment1: OLTF of the ALS XARM and YARM control loops

attachment2: Current phase budget. FM4 and FM10 are the boost filters.

II. ALS in-loop noise
Also, I found that the overall noise of the ALS servo has gone up by about two orders of magnitude (in Hz/rtHz) over the whole range of frequencies for both the arms from the last time the measurements were made. I suspect this could be from some change in the calibration factor. Did anybody touch things around that could have caused this? Or can somebody recollect any changes that I made in the past which might have affected the calibration? Anyways, I will do the calibration again.

[Masayuki, Manasa]

Problem
We wanted to lock both the arms using ALS and get IR to resonate while arms are held using ALS. The X arm was locked using ALS and offsetter2 was used to scan the arm and find IR resonance. The Y arm was locked using ALS. But as the Y arm was brought closer to IR resonance, the X arm ALS loses lock. (attachment 1)

Discussion
We believe that this comes from the X and Y transmission not being well separated at the PSL table. The PBS is not sufficient to decouple them (A strong beatnote ~35dB between the X and the Y arm green lasers can be seen on the spectrum analyzer).

Solution
Decouple the X and Y arm transmitted beams at the PSL table. I am trying to find a wedged mirror/window that can separate the 2 beams at the PSL table before the beat PD (sadly the laseroptik HR532nm optics have no wedge)

[Masayuki, Manasa] 

Flowchart for ALS autolocker. The error signal thresholds will be decided by trial and error.

  I think we can use the IMC autolocker to start with getting this started. Once Jamie fixes the NDSSERVER environment variable bug, we should be able to use his more slick automation code to make it auto lock.

 [Manasa, Masayuki]

[revised at 10/1 pm 5:00]

As we mentioned in previous entry (elog#9171), the phase margin of ALS control was at most 20 degree. We modified the filter of C1ALS_XARM and C1ALS_YARM. The OLTF is in attachment1. Now the phase margins of both arms are more than 35 degree. I modified the FM5 filters of both servo.

FM5 filter is the filter for the phase compensation. It had the one pole at 1000 Hz and one zero at 1Hz. As you can see in attachment2, it start to lose the phase at 50 Hz. But the UGF of our ALS control loop is higher than 100 Hz, so I changed the pole from 1 kHz to 3 kHz in order to get more phase margin at UGF. The new servo have 10dB larger gain than previous filter at higer than 1kHz, but the control loop do nothing in that region, so it's no problem.

We have phase lag between 2 arms. I used same filters for both arms, so I'm wondering where these phase lag came from.

 As I was trying to solve the 2 arm ALS problem, I found the Y arm ALS not so stable AGAIN :( . I measured the in-loop noise of the X arm as ~400Hz/rtHz (60 picometers).

I went ahead and checked the out of loop noise of the ALS and found there is some high frequency noise creeping in above 20Hz for the Y arm ALS (blue curve). I checked the UGFs and phase margins of the phase tracker loops and found they were good (UGF above 1.4KHz and phase margins between 40 and 60 degrees).

So the suspect now is the PDH servo loop of both the arms which has to be checked.

Attached is the out-of loop noise plots of X and Y arm ALS.

 [Manasa, Masayuki]

We made a new flowchart of ALS autolocker. We added the additional step to find the beat note frequency. We have to find a way to read the PSL temperature. By reading the PSL temperature we can decide the sweep range for the end green laser temperature with the curve which measured in previous measurement (in this entry)

We have three thresholds of error signal. One is the threshold for checking the arms are stabilized or not. It should be some hundreds count. Another threshold is to check that the suspensions are not kicked. This should be some thousands counts (in flow chart, it is 2K counts). The other is to check the optimal servo gain. If the servo gain is too high, the UGF is also too high and we will not have enough gain margin. The error signal start to oscillate at the UGF. We will check this oscillation and find the optimal gain. In flow chart this threshold is 1K counts.

We found the PDH servo gain for Y arm green was set at 2 (too low). The gain was set to 8.6 (based on earlier OLTF measurement elog 8817).

The ALS out-of loop noise was remeasured. We also measured the out-of loop noise of each arm while the other arm had no green (shutter closed). There doesn't seem to be any difference in the noise (between green and orange for Y arm and red and pink for the X arm) except that the noise in the X arm was slightly low for the same conditions (blue and red)  when measurement was repeated.

TRANSLATION by Jenne:  We first locked both X and Y for IR using the LSC, and X and Y for green using the analog PDH servos.  We measured the _PHASE_OUT_Hz calibrated error signals for both X and Y in this configuration - this gives us the out of loop noise for the ALS system, the Green and Blue traces in the plot.  We then closed the X end shutter, and measured the Y arm's error signal (to check to see if there is any noise contribution from the suspected X-Y cross beatnote).  Then, we closed the Y end shutter, relocked the Xarm on green's 00 mode, and measured the X arm's error signal.  We weren't sure why the Pink curve was smaller than the Blue curve below a few Hz, so we repeated the original measurement with both arms dichroic.  We then got the Red curve.  So, we should ignore the blue curve (although I still wonder why the noise changed in such a short time period - I don't think we did anything other than unlock and relock the cavity), and just see that the Green and Gold curves look similar to one another, and the Red and Pink curves look similar to one another.  This tells us that at least the out of loop noise is not affected by any X-Y cross beatnote.

[Manasa, Masayuki]

We succeeded in stabilizing both the arms using ALS and get IR to resonate at the sametime.

Measurement

At each step we measured the _PHASE_OUT_Hz calibrated error signals for  Y in this configuration so as to get the in-loop noise of ALS control of YARM

1. we stabilized YARM off IR resonance by using ALS, misaligned ETMX, closed XARM green shutter. That means no IR flashing and no green in XARM.

2. we aligned the ETMX with XARM green shutter closed.

3. we opened the green shutter and locked the green laser with PDH to the XARM.

4. we stabilized the XARM using ALS and off resonance for IR.

5.We brought the XARM to IR resonance with YARM stabilized off IR resonance.

6. we brought the YARM to IR resonance

Beat frequencies when both the arms were stabilized and had IR resonating :
X arm beat frequency = 73.2 MHz; Y arm beat frequency = 26.6 MHz.

Attachment

1.the ALS in-loop noise in X and Y arms with IR off resonance and resonating.

2.the ALS in-loop noise in Y arm in each step from 1 to 6.(will follow soon)

Discussion

The Y arm ALS in-loop noise doesn't seem to be different in any of the configurations in step 1 to 6. This seems to mean that the ALS of the two arms are decoupled.

Actually we are not sure what changed from the last few days (when we were seeing some sort of coupling between the ALS of X and Y arm) except for YARM green PDH servo gain changed (see this entry),

I checked the BK precision 1856D manual. I found that although this frequency counter can measure upto 3.5GHz, it has 2 separate input channels to measure two range of frequencies.

One input to measure between 0.1Hz to 100 MHz and the other to measure between 80MHz to 3.5GHz. Our beat frequency desirable range is <100MHz for stable ALS. Also, the beat PD response falls off beyond ~150MHz . Should we be happy with this frequency counter and use it in the 0.1Hz-100MHz range or look for one with a better measuring range?

P.S. Right now we are using the spectrum analyzer in the control room set to frequency range from 10MHz - 140 MHz for beat note search. 

[Manasa, Masayuki]

We locked MICH with 2 arms stabilized by ALS control.

Measurement

We measured the power spectrum of the LSC-MICH_IN1  at each step so as to know the in-loop noise of MICH. And also we measured the OLTF of MICH loop and the error signal with BS excited at 580 Hz and MICH notch filter at same frequency enabled to obtain the MICH calibration factor.

1. We locked  MICH using the AS55Q error signal and fedback to BS actuator. (Red curve)

2. We locked  MICH and locked both the arms using POX11 and POY11 error signals and fedback to ETMs actuators.(Blue curve)

3. We stabilized both the arms using ALS. We use the ALS error signals and fedback to ETMs actuators. And then we locked  MICH.(Magenta curve)

Attachment

The green and brown curve are the ALS in-loop noise, which is the _PHASE_OUT_Hz calibrated error signals. So for these two curves the unit of vertical axis is Hz/rHz. The other curves are the MICH in-loop noises and these are not calibrated. So for these curves the unit of vertical axis is counts/rHz.

Discussion

The UGF of MICH loop is 10 Hz with phase margin of 45 degrees (measured today). The FPMI noise with ALS stabilized arms is much larger than the FPMI with IR PDH locked arms above 30 Hz. That is because the ALS arm stability is not as good as the stability of PDH locked arms. We have to analyze and verify the calibrated numbers for FPMI + ALS with model.

I wrote the down script for ALS. This script is  (script)/ALS/ALSdown.py When this script is running, it watches the feedback signal of the ALS control loop so as to shut down the servo immediately when  the suspension is kicked. 

When  the value of  C1:ALS-X(Y)ARM_OUT  becomes larger than the threshold (right now it is 4500 counts), it changes the servo gain to 0, turns off all filters except for FM5 (the filter for phase compensation), resets the history of the phase tracker of each arm and prints the time on window when the suspension kicked

I put the switch on the C1ALS screen, and if you push this switch the window will open (like when you turn on the c1ass script) and the script start to run. For stopping this script, you have to close that window or press Ctrl + C on that window. This is little bit inconvenient, but we will make autolocker script for ALS and this downscript will be included that script soon. So I think it is enough to protect the suspensions right now.

Step by step procedure for stabilizing arms using ALS servo:

The procedure is the same for both the arms. 

0. Check that the ALS arm servos are turned OFF and not sending any signals to the ETM suspensions. 

1. Find the beat note by varying the laser temperature (moving the slider for SLOW_SERVO2_OFFSET).
Tip: It is easier to have the arms locked using IR PDH while searching for the beat note. Also check the stability of the MC. Unstable MC will cause the PSL temperature to drift and thereby affect the beat frequency.

2. Once you have the beat note, check if the beat amplitude is ~ -15 to -20 dBm. If the amplitude is small, then the alignment needs to be fixed (either the green input pointing at the end tables or the PSL green alignment). This is important because the UGF of the phase tracking loop (should be above 1KHz) changes with the amplitude of the beat note.
Also the beat frequency should be < 100 MHz; preferably below 80 MHz.

3. Disable IR PDH locking if you had used it while searching for the beat note. 

4. Press CLEAR HISTORY button for the phase tracker servo. Check if the phase tracking loop is stable (phase tracker servo output counts should not be ramping up). If the phase tracker is not stable, check the servo gain and phase margin of the loop.

5. Turn OFF all filters in the ALS arm servo filter module except for FM5 (phase compensation filter). With ALS arm servo gain set to zero, enable the arm servo and allow ALS control signals to be sent to the ETM suspensions.

5. Open dtt and look at the power spectrum of the ALS error signal (C1:ALS-BEAT?_FINE_PHASE_OUT_HZ). 

6. Set ALS arm servo gain +/- 0.1 to check the sign of the servo gain. Wrong sign of gain will make the loop unstable (beat note moving all over the frequency range on the spectrum analyzer). If this happens, set the gain to zero immediately and clear history of phase tracker servo. If you have set the correct sign for gain, the servo will stabilize the beat note frequency right away. 

7. Once you know the correct sign of the servo gain, increase the gain in steps while simultaneously looking at the power spectrum of error signal on dtt (it is convenient to set dtt measurements to low bandwidth and exponential measurement settings). Increase the gain until you can see a slight bump close to the UGF of the ALS servo (>100Hz). 
There have been times when this servo gain was in a few hundreds; but right now it varies from +/- 10-20 for both the arms. So we are stepping up gain in steps of +/- 2.

8. Enable filters (FM2, FM3, FM6, FM7, FM8). Wait to see the rms noise of the error signal go down (a few seconds).

9. Enable boost filter (FM10). There also exists a weaker boost filter (FM4) which we don't use any more. 

Note:

1. Beat frequency changes affect both the servo gain and sign of gain. So if you lose stability of ALS servo at any point, you should go through all the steps again.

2. At any point if the ALS arm servo becomes unstable (which can happen if the MC loses lock or if the beat frequency was too high ), change the servo gain to zero immediately. Turn OFF all the filters except for FM5 (if they were enabled) and reset phase tracker servo (CLEAR HISTORY button in the phase tracker filter module). Masayuki has written the down script that does all this. The script will detect arm servo loop instability by continuously looking at the feedback signal. Details about the script can be found here. 

Here is a cheat sheet that can give you an idea of the SLOW SERVO2 offset range to scan in order to find the beat note:

PSL temperature  X offset   Y offset
31.58                     5278       -10890
31.52                     5140       (not recorded)
31.45                     4810       (not recorded)
31.33                     4640       -10440
31.28                     4500       -10340
            

 I modified the ALS down script. When  the value of  C1:ALS-X(Y)ARM_OUT  becomes larger than the threshold, it turn off the output ON/OFF switch immediately. That is because the ALS servo has ramp time. When script changes the gain to 0, it takes some seconds. That is not good for suspensions.

 After changing servo gain to 0 and turning off the filters, the script waits ramp time and turn on the servo output switch.

After Jenne and Masayuki told that they were not able to stabilize the ALS for either arms yesterday, I looked into things with the ALS servo.

I had trouble initially trying to even stabilize the loop for a few minutes. So I measured the OLTF of the phase tracker loop and the ALS X arm servo. I changed phase tracker gain to 125 and that rendered UGF of 2KHz and phase margin of 45 degrees for the phase tracker loop.

The ALS servo gain was set such that UGF was 125Hz and phase margin 38 degrees (attached is the transfer function measurement for the servo).

I could stabilize the arm to ~500 Hz/rtHz (rms), which is twice that of what we had while we did the (PRMI+1arm ALS).

But ALS was still not stable long enough with the higher rms to even allow a cavity scan to find IR resonance. I suspect the problem to now lie with the PDH loop. We should be looking to stabilize the PDH for green if we need a stable ALS.

[Manasa, Masayuki]

- Motivation

Our goal is to realize PRMI+one arm again. However we found that the noise level of the Y-arm is worse than before (entry).
  Today we went through into the servo gains of the ALS related loops. 

- What we did

Step 1 to 6 is for Yarm
Alignment of the cavity and the green:
1. Locked arms using IR PDH, aligned the green beam to increase the transmission. Now the value of ALS-TRY_OUTPUT is more than 0.8.

Checking and adjustment of the end green PDH gain:
2. Measured the OLTF of green PDH loop.
3. The gain of the PDH box was 8.2. We found that the UGF was too high and the phase mergin was too low (20deg)
    Therefore, the gain was reduced to the gain to 6.8. Now, the UGF and phase margin are 17.7 kHz, 41.96 degree, respectively.

Phase tracker loop:
4. Measured the OLTF of the phase tracker loop. The UGF was 2 kHz, and phase margin was 45 degree.
    We found that these were already the nominal and optimized numbers.
    For a reference: the filter bank C1:ALS-BEATX_FINE_PHASE has the gain of 110.

ALS loop:
5. Disable the IR PDH lock, and stabilized Yarm by ALS. We measured the OLTF of the ALS loop (attachment 1).
    The UGF and phase margin were turned out to be 125 Hz and 41 degree. respectively. This looks pretty optimal.
    The ALS servo gain (the gain of the C1:ALS-YARM module) was 15.0.
6. We measured the in-loop noise of the ALS loop (C1:BEATY_FINE_PHASE_OUT_HZ) (attachment 2).
    The comparison of the in-loop performance is discussed below.

- Discussion

After these adjustment, we found that the ALS in-loop noise of Yarm decreased in high frequency band.
(see this entry for the comparison. Sorry for my laziness! I don't have the overlaid plot)

If we believe this is true, lowering the end PDH gain improved the noise level between 100Hz to 1kHz.
This sounds weird as we decreased the PDH gain, rather than increased. We should confirm this effect by increasing the gain.

Now the in-loop RMS is started to be dominated by the peaks at 3, 16, and 24 Hz.
We should compare the current in-loop spectrum with the previous spectrum when the ALS was working fine.

By the way:
We suffered from frequent disruptions of the ALS servo during our investigation.
As we speculated that this was caused by the malfunction of the green PDH loop, we left the arm still and observed
how the green PDH lock is robust. Our discovery was that the green PDH loop had frequent interruptions (every 5~10min).

From this observation, we strongly feel that we need to look into the entire end PDH loop.

[Masayuki, Manasa]

We have stabilized the ALS for Y arm and concluded that although the PDH servo could be stabilized, it drifts and loses stability over a span of few hours. (See masayuki's elog today)

We wanted to follow the same systematic procedure like in the previous elog to look at the condition of the X arm as well.
In order to stabilize the green PDH servo, we held the arm using the IR PDH and aligned the end-green to the X arm.

We see 2 TEM00-like modes and one oblong TEM00+TEM01 mode that can lock to the cavity. It is not clear to me as yet as to how to differentiate between these 2 TEM-00 like modes and how we should decide between them.

One of the TEM00-like mode is strongly matched to the arm cavity. Normalized GTRX measures 0.6 counts. The other TEM00-like mode is weakly matched to the cavity. Normalized GTRX measures 0.12 counts. This might be the reason why Jenne and Masayuki were seeing a lower beat amplitude. Camera images are shown below.

On another note, we found that an oblong mode (looks like a TEM00+TEM10 mode) also locks to the cavity. The mode looks weird in that, only one half of the mode is seen moving due to seismic noise and the other part does not. I am not sure how I can describe this...so here is a 10 second video of how this mode looks like. 

 - Motivation

We found that we need to look into the entire end PDH loop to figure out what causes the worse noise level of the Y-arm than before.(entry)
Today, I measured in-loop noise of the end PDH loop and the ALS loop with different end PDH servo gain of Y-arm to make sure the PDH servo gain change the noise level of the ALS control loop.

- What I did

Measuring the OLTF of the end PDH loop:
1. Measured the OLTF of the PDH loop with the end PDH servo gain 6 and 7.

The UGF and  phase margine: 16 kHz and 53 degree(gain 7) 

                                             7.8 kHz and 86 degree(gain 6)

I couldn't measure the OLTF with higher servo gain than 7 because the loop was not stable enough. I guess that is because of the noise of the SR560, which I used for node of the excitation signal.

Calibration of the end PDH error signal
2. Locked the cavity using IR and turn on the notch filter at 580 Hz of the C1:LSC-XARM. Excited the ETMY using awg with sinusoidal signal at 580 Hz. Set the end PDH servo gain to 6 and measured error signal of the end PDH. The calibration factor of the end PDH error signal H is calculated by

H = abs(G + 1) / A * Verr / Vin

where G is the OLTF of the end PDH, A is the actuator response of the ETMY, Vin is the amplitude of the excitation signal and Verr is the error signal at 580 Hz. This H convert the  error signal to the fluctuation of the cavity length, so it has the unit of V/m. We can change that unit to V/Hz by multiplying f/L, where f is the laser frequency of IR and L is the length of the arm. In this case the H convert the error signal to the fluctuation of the resonant frequency of the cavity.
 The actual number was

H = 1.4e7 [V/m]  (2.0e-6 [V/Hz])

In-loop noise of the end PDH loop
3. Measured the error signal of the PDH loop with the end PDH servo gain of 6.0, 7.0, 8.0 and 9.0. I calibrated these signals with above H, so  these unit is Hz/rHz. I attached the result of these in-loop noise. When the end PDH servo gain is 9.0, the end PDH loop looks unstable. And 8.0 looks to be the optimal gain in terms of the in-loop noise of end PDH loop.

ALS in-loop noise:
4. Stabilized the Y-arm with ALS control loop with different end PDH servo gain, and measured in-loop noise of the ALS control loop. I attached these results and discussed about this results below.

- Discussion

 Now we can say that too high PDH servo gain makes ALS loop very noisy. Compare to when the PDH servo gain is 7 or 8, the ALS in-loop noise is roughly 4 times higher when the PDH servo gain is 9.0, which means the PDH loop is not stable. However between 100 Hz and the end PDH in-loop noise has no big difference between when the servo gain is 6 and 9. If this high frequency noise comes from the end PDH control and this effect is linear, these noises should be same level. Also the PDH servo gain of 7.0 looks optimal gain in terms of the in-loop noise of ALS control loop, although the 8.0 has smallest end PDH in-loop noise. Actually PDH in-loop noise are smaller than ALS in-loop noise.

 I'm wondering what causes the 60 Hz peak in black curve. When the gain become higher, the peak at 60 Hz looks to become larger. The UGF of the ALS loop is above 100Hz, so  it's not because of that. I feel there is some hint for understanding this result in this peak.

From this observation, I could make sure that the end PDH servo gain change the ALS in-loop noise, but that effect doesn't look so simple.

By the way
 We should take care about 60 Hz comb peaks.  You can see huge peaks in PDH in-loop noise and also in ALS in-loop noise.

I wrote the script to scan the cavity using ALS until it finds IR resonance . This script is  (script)/ALS/ALSfindIRresonance.py I attached the time series of the C1:ALS-OFFSETTER and IR transmission of XARM when the script was working.

When you start this script, it start rough scan. It steps the offset of the C1:ALS-OFFSETER with ramp time, and for each step it checks the value of C1:LSC-TR. At rough scan, one step is 0.1 count. When IR transmission become larger than threshold, this script start fine scan. In fine scan, this script steps the offset by 0.01 for the range of 2. For each step, C1:LSC_TR value is measured, and after fine scan it set the offset to the value which had the maximal C1:LSC-TR.

I put new button 'Scan %ARM'  to the ALS screen. You can run this script by pushing that button.

[Manasa, Masayuki]

- Motivation

For PRMI + 2arm, we tried to make the ALS control noise better. As this entry we had huge 60 Hz comb noise in PDH loop of YARM.

So we tried to figure out the problem and fix it.

- What we did

We checked which power supply the staff in Y-end are connected to, and change some of them to connect to 1Y4 AC power supply from wall AC. What we changed was
1.Main end laser
2.He-Ne laser
3.Green REFL PD

We checked error signal of PDH control and compared before and after. The 60 Hz peak get better from -80 dBVpk to -90 dBVpk. Also I attached the plot of XARM, privious YARM (the data of Yesterday night), and current YARM ALS in-loop noises. The RMS of ALS in-loop noise of Y-arm get better by factor of 2. However, even the 60 Hz comb noise get better than before, RMS get worse by comb noise. 

We would like to make these noise better at least until these noises don't affect to RMS, so we should continue to check.

[Manasa, Masayuki]

Purpose

As this entry, Yarm ALS is not stable enough to lock PRMI + 2 arms. We tried to figure out what is the reason.

What we did

Check connection and alignment

1. Check the Green REFL PD.
Reflection is hitting the center of PD.

2. Check all the BNC connections
All connection are fine.

3. Check which power supply the PDH box is connected to.
PDH box is connected to 1Y4 AC power supply.

Check the control signal and error signal

4. Connected the PZT OUTMON to PC
Before the PZT output was not connected to the monitor channel. We connected that.

5. Saw the time series of the error signal and control signal (PZT output)
 When the Yarm lost end PDH lock, we found that control signal kicked the PZT of end green laser. And also we saw the saturation of control signal. We are not sure where this saturation comes from.

Discussion

With these check, we couldn't find any problem in connection or alignment. But the PDH control signal looks somehow strange. We tried to compare the Yarm signals with that of the Xarm, but we could not conclude anything meaningful.

We don't understand right now but we will continue to check that. We will add more details to the discussion once we have looked into the PDH box signals using oscilloscope.

Summary
In 2arms + MICH configuration, residual motion of the cavity will couple with MICH signal. When cavity length change, the reflectivity of cavity also change. And that cause the phase shift in reflected light. That phase shift is detected in MICH signal. When we try to lock the DRMI + arm, that coupling will be problem for lock acquisition. For practice to estimate that coupling, I estimated the coupling between the cavity motion and the AS55Q signal.

What I did

- Measurement steps
  I did the same measurement as that of this entry. For the estimation below steps are needed. The detail of each step will be written below.
  --Measurement and calibration of the AS55Q error signal with MICH + 2arms locked by ALS control
  --Measurement of the ALS in-loop noise and estimation of residual motion of the cavities.
  --Calibration of the coupling from residual arm motion to AS55Q signal

- Calibration of  the AS55Q signal
1. Sensor gain estimation
  We used the same method as the previous entry,
  We excited the BS at 580 Hz with a given amplitude (Vin). We enabled the notch filter at 580 Hz in the LSC MICH servo. We measured  the peak height (Verr) of the AS55Q error signal. We used the actuator response (A_bs) of BS measured in this entry.
  We can get the sensor gain (H) of AS55Q in unit of count/m

          Verr    1
   H = ------- -------
          Vin   A_bs

By this calculation H = 4.2e+07.

2. Fitting of OLTF for the MICH loop
  We measured the OLTF of the MICH loop. Modelled OLTF is fitted into the measurement data. That modelled OLTF includes the actuator response of BS, the MICH servo filters, DAI,DAA,AI,AA filters, the TF of sample and hold circuit. (About DAI, DAA filters and S/H circuit please read this entry. About AI,AA filters please read this entry)  Also I put time-delay into that OLTF. I estimated that time-delay and the gain of OLTF by fitting.  The time delay was 311usec.

3. Estimation of the MICH free running noise
 With modeled OLTF, I estimated the MICH free running noise.

Estimation of the coupling from residual cavity motion to AS55Q signal
 The ALS in-loop noise data has the unit of Hz/rHz (disturbance of the cavity resonant frequency). By multiplying L_arm/f_laser we can convert the unit to m/rHz (disturbance of the cavity length) .
 I used the same coupling constant between residual motion of cavity and MICH noise as this entry. For estimation of the coupling constant, we excited ETMs  and measured the TF from excitation signal to AS55Q error signal.  I assumed the cavity pole as 4000 Hz. The result is discussed below

Discussion

  ALS in-loop noise include the sensor noise. in high frequency region the in-loop noise is dominated by the sensor noise. So in this region in-loop noise does not mean actual residual motion of the cavity.  And this sensor noise pushes the mirror. So we have to estimate the actual motion of the cavity by multiplying the servo transfer function of the control in this region.

 I made 2 plots. Both include the MICH free running noise and estimated coupling noise from both arms. In one plot, for estimation of the coupling I multiplied only coupling constant to calibrated in-loop noise of the ALS loop. In another plot,  I multiplied coupling constant and OLTF of ALS loop in order to estimate the actual motion of the cavity.  If the 3 curves are coincide in first plot, that means the ALS in-loop noise is same as the residual cavity motion in that region and the MICH free running noise is dominated by coupling from residual cavity motion. If those curves are coincide in second plot, that means the ALS in-loop noise is sensor noise in that region.

 Above 40 Hz, the 3 curves are totally in coincident in first plot. On the other hand in second plot the 3 curves look similar in this region. That may mean above 40 Hz the ALS noise are dominated by sensor noise and MICH free running noise is dominated by the coupling from residual cavity motion.  Also in the region between 10 Hz and 40 Hz, the MICH free running noise seems to be dominated by coupling from cavity motion.

Figure 1

Figure 2

In second plot, the coupling from cavity motion is overestimated. It's possibly because of overestimation of coupling constant, but I'm not sure.
Koji mentioned that we should measure the residual motion of the cavity by using POX and POY. Now the ALS is much more stable than before, so I think we can easily do the measurement again with out of loop measurement. That will be more strait forward measurement.

Control signal measurement of end PDH control

The Yarm ALS wasn't robust. Yesterdays night, we found that suspension kicked by something and that was the reason why the end PDH control lost lock. To make sure that the PDH loop itself is robust, I measured control signals of End PDH loops. When the gain inclease, the peak at UGF appeared and become unstable. Both arms does not seems unstable before the peaks appear.

 Xarm PDH servo gain optimization

I optimized the x end PDH servo gain with measuring OLTF. Now the servo gain is 5.0. UGF is around 10 kHz and phase margin is 40 degree.

Also I measured out of loop noise. I locked the arm using IR PDH, and measure the ALS error signal. The high frequency noise become better.

I calibrated the ALS-OFFSETTER output.
I measured the FSR of cavity in unit of counts. That was 395 counts. Our cavity FSR is 3.8 MHz, so 1 count of the OFFSETTER output is 9.7 kHz.

 Really? What cavity length did you use in the calculation?

 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. 

What a such long pain we suffered.

After more than three years from Kiwamu's discovery, the PDH box 50kHz oscillation issue was finally solved.

This "weird peak at 50kHz" was caused by the oscillation of the voltage regulator (ON's MC7912).
As it imposed common noise almost everywhere, it screwed up transfer function measurements
like EricQ saw recently.

The negative voltage regulator (79XX) tends to get unstable than the positive counter parts (78XX).

The oscillation was removed by adding 22uF electrolytic capacitor between the output pin (pin3) and the ground pin (pin1) of MC7912.
This is indeed more than 20 times of the specification you can find in the data sheet.

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. 

OK, the next question will be "why the loop bandwidth is so miserable?"
In other words, what is preventing us to have the bandwidth of 20~30kHz?
Your breaking down will give us the answer.

I'm not as good as a fit, but it seems that there is a loop delay of about 30 microseconds, looking at the high frequency phase. This might explain the limitation on the BW. Eric should be able to get the delay out of the fit with some care.

There was 0.2 mW green at the X end.

The doubling oven temp was changed from 37.5 to 36 degrees C

Power at green shutter 3 mW  The alignment was not touched.

Manasa, Steve: Please revisit the Xend oven temperature again.

I found that the X end SLOW control was left on for ~15days. The output of the filter had grown to ~2e7.

This yielded the laser temperature pulled with the maximum output of the DAC.

This was the cause of the power reduction of the X end SHG; phase matching condition was changes as the wavelength of the IR was changed.

Once the SLOW output was reset, the green REFL was reduced from 4000cnt to 1800cnt.

Y arm green: Nothing much was disturbed. I touched the steering mirrors and brought GTRY from 0.2 to 0.9.

X arm green: The PDH lock was not very stable mostly because of the low power in green. I changed the oven temperature for the doubler to 36.4 corresponding to maximum green power. GTRX increased from 0.1 to 0.9

Both the X and Y arm green alignment were tuned on the PSL table to their respective beat PDs.

The PSL green shutter was not responding to the medm buttons. I found the PSL green shutter set to 'local' and 'N.O' (these are switches in the shutter controller). I do not see any elog and not sure as to why the controller was even touched in the first place. I set the shutter controls to 'remote' and 'N.C'.

The X and Y arms were locked successfully using ALS and the arms could be scanned and held to support IR resonance.

The same procedure as in elog 9219 was followed. In-loop noise was measured to be between 200-300 Hz rms for the lock.

ALS settings for the lock

X arm : FM 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10  Gain = 11.0
Y arm : FM 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10  Gain = 10.0

Nice restoration. We eventually want to make transition of the servo part from ALS to LSC model for the further handing off to the other signals.
Please proceed to it.

 ETMX green power at shutter 3.6 mW at 36.35 C doubler crystal temp.   [ Innolight IR settings 2.0 A,  40.83 C,  500 mW before Faraday 1/2 plate ] 

 ETMY green power at shutter 0.75 mW  at 35.8 C  doubler crytal temp.  [ NPRO IR settings 1.82A,  231 mW_ display,  DT 21 C, DTEC +1V, LT 40 C, LTEC 0.1V, T +41.041 ]  

 The X -arm fiber is in the high cable tray and it has has  coupler mounts.

 The Y -arm fiber is in the low cable tray and it has no coupler mounts.

 The fibers are only protected at entering and exiting the trays.

 We have only 68 ft spare 1.5"  ID protective plastic tubing.

Q and I have started to use the ALS slow servo for the end aux lasers while locking the arms using ALS. The servo prevents us from hitting the limits of the PZT range for the end lasers and a better PDH locking.

But keeping the servo ON causes the slow output to drift away making it hard to find the beat note everytime the arm loses lock. The extensive beat note search following the unlock can be avoided by clearing history of the slow servo.

 Ha!

To check the basolute frequency stability of the old monochrome HP 8591E RF Spectrum analyzer that we're using for the ALS beat readout, I hooked its 10 MHz reference output (from its rear panel) into the A channel of the SRS SR620 frequency counter. The SR620 is locked to the FS 720 Rubidium clock via the 10 MHz connections in their rear panels.

So, we can assume that this is a good absolute readout. It reads 9.999860.7 +/- 0.3 Hz. So its 139.1-139.4 Hz lower than 10 MHz. The +/- 0.3 is just a slow drift that I see over the course of 10 minutes.

So, let's say that the analyzer is low by 10 ppm, so the arm length estimates are short by ~0.4 mm. A negligible correction, so there's no need to use atomic clocks to measure our arm lengths.

Green light power decreased from 3 mW to 1 mW at the ETMX-ISCT shutter. More later.

It is actually very tricky to measure the green power at the output of the doubling crystal as the IR often leaks into the measurement.
I checked the green beam powers on the X/Y/PSL tables.

CONCLUSION: There is no green beam which exceeds 5mW anywhere in the 40m lab.

Note: The temperature of the doubling crystal at the X end was optimized to have maximum green power. It was 36.3degC and is now 36.7degC.

X END:

When the angles of the wave plates are optimized, we have 539mW input to the doubling crystal.
With the Xtal temperature of 36.7degC, where the green power is maximized, the power right after
the harmonic separator (H.S.) was 9.6mW.

Xtal temp 36.7degC   ~~~
                      |
--539mW@IR-->{Xtal}-->/-->9.6mW-->{Mirror}-->4.69mW-->{Mirror}-->4.54mW-->{Faraday}
                    (H.S.)

If we believe these 4.69mW and 4.54mW are purely from the green, we have 4.8mW right after the H.S.
This corresponds to the conversion efficiency of 1.6%/W (cf. theretical number 2%/W)

By disabling the heating of the crystal, we can reduce the green light by factor of 60. But still the reading right after the H.S. was 5.3mW

Xtal temp 29.2degC   ~~~
                      |
--539mW@IR-->{Xtal}-->/-->5.3mW-->{Mirror}-->285uW-->{Mirror}-->74.3uW-->{Faraday}
                    (H.S.)

Naively taking the difference, the green beam right after the H.S. is 4.4mW.

In either cases, the green power right after the oven is slightly less than 5mW.

Y END:

When the angles of the wave plates are optimized, we have 287mW input to the doubling crystal.
With the Xtal temperature of 36.0degC, where the green power is maximized, the power right after
the harmonic separator (H.S.) was 0.86mW.

Xtal temp 36.0degC   ~~~
                      |
--287mW@IR-->{Xtal}-->/-->0.86mW-->
                    (H.S.)

When the temperature was shifted to 39.2degC, the reading after the H.S. was 70uW. Therefore the contamination by the IR is small
in this setup and we can believe the above reading in 70uW accuracy. This 0.86mW corresponds to the conversion efficiency of 1.2%/W.

PSL

The incident IR is 80mW. We have 170uW after the H.S., which corresponds to the conversion efficiency of 2.6%/W. Maybe there is some IR contamination?
From the vacuum chamber total 1mW of green is derivered when both arms are locked and aligned.

Thus the total green power at the PSL table is less than 5mW.

The Y arm green transmission had come down to 0.3 and the green steering mirrors on the Y end table required some minor alignment adjustments to bring back transmission to around 0.75 counts.

 We've been having trouble tuning the ALS DIFF matrix. Trying to see if the MC2 EXC can be cancelled in ALS DARM by adjusting the relative gains in ALSX and ALSY Phase Tracker outputs.

There's a bunch of intermittent behavior. Between different ALS locks, we get more or less cancellation. We were checking this by driving MC2 at ~100-400 Hz and checking the ALS response (with the ALS loops closed). We noticed that the X and Y readbacks were different by ~5-10 degrees and that we could not cancel this MC2 signal in DARM by more than a factor of 4-5 or so. In the middle of this, we had one lock loss and it came back up with 100x cancellation?

Attached is a PDF showing a swept sine measurement of the ALSX, ALSY, and DARM signals. You can see that there is some phase shift between the two repsonses leading to imperfect cancellation. Any ideas? Whitening filters? HOM resonance? Alignment?