[Ayaka, Koji]

Ayaka pointed out that the PMC has too low unity gain frequency. We checked the history of "C1:PSL-PMC_GAIN"
and found that the gain was minimum from the Friday night. It was returned to nominal gain of 10.

The PMC screen had the gain status indicator always red. This was because C1:PSL-STAT_PMC_NOM_GAIN was 2 instead of 10.
This was fixed by the following command.

ezcawrite C1:PSL-STAT_PMC_NOM_GAIN 10

This will be recorded by the snapshot in an hour.

Another annoying false alerm on the PMC screen was the PMC transmission monitor.
In order to fix this, the following commands were executed.

ezcawrite C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD.LOLO 0.75
ezcawrite C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD.LOW 0.8
ezcawrite C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD.HIGH 0.9
ezcawrite C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD.HIHI 0.95

Also the corresponding EPICS database (/cvs/cds/caltech/target/c1psl/psl.db) has been updated accordingly.

Came this morning to find the PMC was unlocked since 6AM. Laser is still on, but PMC REFL PD DC shows dead white constant 0V on PMC screen. All the controls on the PMC screen show constant 0V actually except for the PMC_ERR_OUTPUT which is a fast channel.

Is PSL Acromag already failing?

I restarted the IOC but it didn't help.

I am now rebooting c1psl... That seemed to help. PMC screen seem to be working again. I am able to lock the PMC now.

IMC was locking easily once some switches on the MC servo screen were put to normal states.

TTs were grossly misaligned. Onces they where aligned, arm cavities were locking easily. Dither align for the X arm is very slow though...

Of course the reboot wiped any logs we could have used for clues as to what happened. Next time it'll be good to preserve this info. I suspect the local subnet went down.

P.S. for some reason the system logs are priveleged now - I ran sudo sysctl kernel.dmesg_restrict=0 on c1psl to make it readable by any user. This change won't persist on reboot.

The new Level 13 mixer on the PMC servo board is installed (minicircuits SRA-3MH).   Since the RF output of the LO board was ~16dBm, I put a 3dB attenuator between the LO board and the LO input on the servo board.  Since the previous cable was *just* the right length, this required adding a tiny bit of cable.  I found a very short cable, which worked out nicely, and didin't leave bunches of extra cable between the two boards.  One of these days if I have time (i.e. if it is necessary), I'll make a new cable for this purpose, so that we don't have 2 cables daisy-chained. 

A note on the Mixer-replacement:  The mixer on the PMC servo board is soldered in a set of 8 through-holes, not stuck in a socket.  So I had to desolder the old Level 23 Mixer (minicircuits RAY-3) which was a total pain.  Unfortunately, in this process, I lifted one of the pads off the back side of the board.  Once the old mixer was removed, it became clear that the pin for the pad I had lifted was shorted via a trace on the front side of the board to the pin directly across from it.  So when installing the new mixer, I did my best to get some solder into the through-hole for the lifted-pad-pin, and then tied it using a jumper wire to the pin that it's shorted to on the front of the board.  You can't see the trace that shorts the two pins because it's underneath the mixer, when the mixer is installed.  (Sidenote: after talking with Rana, this should be okie-dokie, especially if these are ground pins).

The PMC and MC locked nice and happily after I replaced the board and turned all the HV supplies back on, so I call this a success!

I also measured the OLG of the PMC servo after today's adventures in mixer-land.  I get a UGF of 1.4kHz, with 66 degrees of phase margin.  The method for this is in elog 924.

I checked the phase slider setting of the PMC phase screen by putting 30kHz at 100mV into the Ext DC input of the servo board, and looking at the 30kHz peak output of the Mixer Out.  I fiddled with the phase slider, and chose the value for which the 30kHz peak was maximized.  The phase slider is now set to 5.0V. 

The image on the PMCR camera was quite assymetric and PMC output was at 80% .... upon improving the alignment I managed to push it up to 87%

The commissioners complained about the PMC alignment. The PMC input beam was aligned. It made the transmission improved from 0.72 to 0.74.

FYI: Which steering mirrors do we use for the PMC beam alignment?
The mounts are indicated with the red arrows in Attachment 2.
You have to move these two in common and differential for each pitch and yaw.
The first steering (the right one in the picture) has the beam going through the immediate back of the mount.
So touching the yaw knob of this mount needs some care so that you don't block the PMC refl beam.

[Paco, Tomislav, Yuta]

Somehow, when we were trying to measure WFS open loop transfer functions, PMC unlocked many times for the past two hours and PMC transmission got low.
PMC iput beam was aligned again, and IMC WFS DC offsets and RF offsets were adjusted.
PMC transmission is now C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD~0.75, and IMC transmission is C1:IOO-MC_TRANS_SUM~1.4e4.
Actually, IMC transmission once reached 1.5e4 at 06-16-2022 20:01 UTC with PMC transmission of 0.75 (see Attached). There might be a better alignment.

[Yuta, JC, Radhika]

PMC input beam was aligned again, bringing transmission from 0.70 to ~0.75. To avoid blocking the PMC refl beam, I found success handling the yaw knob of the first steering mirror from below.

[JC, Paco]

I attempted to align PMC Beam from a transmission of 0.72. I failed to do so on my own, but Paco arrived and helped me out. Transmission has gone from from 0.72 to ~0.73.

[Paco, Anchal, JC]

C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD ~ 0.715 this morning, this was increased to ~0.730. There also seems to be an earthquake going on and the MC is flashing.

C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD was increased from 0.72 to 0.731

I don't know why, but as you can see in Steve's plot from earlier this morning, the PMC transmission has been going down significantly all weekend.  The PMC refl camera was very bright.  I tweaked up the alignment (mostly pitch), and now we're back to normal. 

The IMC was having trouble staying locked all morning, and I'm hoping that this PMC adjustment will help - the MC already looks better, although it's only been a few minutes.

Summary:

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

Details

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

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

PZT monitor is not lying to us, I've measured it with a voltmeter. But PMC SERVO is still interesting. If I break the loop after PMCERR signal monitor (C1:PSL-PMC_BLANK=0), I can change PZT voltage from 0V (C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP = -7.3) to 132V (C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP=-10.0). If I break the loop by enabling TEST1, PZT voltage goes up to 294 V, though voltage on the TEST1 and MIXER MON is 0.

{Jon, Yehonathan}

We burt-restored the PSL and the PMC locked immediately.

The PMC is now locked on the AOM first order mode.

{Yehonathan, Jon}

We are able to lock the PMC on the TEM00 mode of the deflected beam.

However when we turn off the driving voltage to the AOM and back on the lock is not restored. It get stuck on some higher order mode.

There are plethora of modes present when the PZT is scanned, which makes us believe the cavity is misaligned.

To lock again on the TEM00 mode again we disconnect the loop (FP Test point 1), find a TEM00 mode using the DC output adjust and close the loop again.

Make sure to measure the power drop of the beam downstream of the AOM but before the PMC. Need to plot both together to make sure the chop time is much shorter than the 1/e time.

 The PMC PZT voltage slider seemed sticky.  First it would not do anything, than after moving slider back an forth a few times, it had a range of 60V and later it had full range and it locked

The PMC was locking right the way, but it's transmission would not go up.  Finally I get it back up by moving the "sticky" DC Gain slider up and down a few times.

 The FSS was -2.9, and the PMC won't lock happily unless you bring this back to 0.  The symptom that this is happening is that the PMC reflection camera is totally saturated, but the PMC still looks like it's locked on 00.

- PMC suddenly refused to lock.

- Investigated what's wrong

- Finally, I touched RF Output Adjust (C1:PSL-PMC_RFADJ). Then it started locking.

- C1:PSL-PMC_RFADJ was set to 2.0 by rana when we looked at the PMC LO issue.
  Now PMC does not lock with this value. I set it to 6.0 so that the lock is robust.

- Right before I lost PMC locking, I had some difficulty in locking IMC. Of course,  the robustness of the PMC is related to the robustness of the IMC.
  We definitely need to investigate this. (RF powers, open loop TF, etc)

The attached plots show the PMC cavity line width measurement with 1 mW and 160 mW into the PMC. The two curves on each plot are the PMC transmitted power and the ramp of the fast input of the NPRO. The two measurements are consistent within errors - a few %. The PMC line width  3.5 ms (FWHM) x 4 V / 20 ms (slope of the ramp) x 1.1 MHz / V (NPRO fast actuator calibration from Innolight spec sheet) = 0.77 MHz.

Here is the output of the calculation using Malik Rakhmanov code:

modematching =  8.4121e-01

transmission1 =   2.4341e-03

transmission2 =   2.4341e-03

transmission3 =   5.1280e-05

averageLosses =  6.1963e-04

visibility =  7.7439e-01

The PMC local oscillator is going a little weird dying.  We need to check out why the level is fluctuating so much.

Here's a 6 month plot, where you can see that the lower level keeps getting lower (y-axis is dBm):

This LHO entry from 2008 shows where we first discovered this effect. As Rick Savage and Paul Schwinberg later found out, the ERA-5SM+ amplifier slowly degrades over several years and was replaced for both of the eLIGO interferometers. We have spares in the Blue box and can replace this sometime during the day.

Our PMC LO is made by this obsolete crystal oscillator circuit: D000419. There are many versions of this floating around, but they all have the ERA-5 issue.

It seems that there is no better chip in MiniCircuits line-up with the same form factor.
ERA-5 is the most powerful one in the ERA (or MAR) series.

If the output is ~0dBm we have MAR-6SM in stock. But I suspect that ERA-5 was driven at the power level close to its saturation (~18dBm).

If we allow different form factors, we have GVA-** or GALI-** in the market and also in the blue tower, in order to gain more performance margin.
If it is difficult to apply them, I would rather use another ERA-5 with enhanced heat radiation.

I'm sure that Downs has EAR-5 replacement.

Koushik and Koji try to fix the PMC oscillator issue. So we remove the module from the rack.
This means we don't have the PMC transmission during the work.

Koushik replaced an ERA-5 in the PC path. We put the module back to the rack and found no change.
The epics LO level monitor monitor is still fluctuating from 6~11dBm. We need more thorough investigation
by tracing the signals everywhere on the board.

Despite the poor situation of the modulation, PMC was locking (~9PM). Rana suspect that the PMC demodulation
phase was not correctly adjusted long time. 

Koushik has the measured power levels and the photos of the board. I'll ask him to report on them.

 After the ERA-5 was replaced (see Koushik elog) we relocked the PMC.

The new LO level going into the PMC servo card is +11.5 dBm. The LO mon on the PMC card reads 9 dBm and seems so flat I now suspect the monitor circuit.

I also measured the RF drive to the EOM as a function of C1:PSL-PMC_RFADJ on the Phase Shifter screen.

The phase shifter slider gives ~75 deg/V in phase shift of the RF out to the EOM. I tried to optimize the loop gain quickly using the fluctuations in the reflected power. The loop oscillates at high frequency with the slider at 21 dB and also at 9 dB. So I set the gain at +14 dB. Needs to be optimized correctly in the daytime.

 Updates from Koushik:

The power levels measured (before and after relacement of ERA-5) are as follows:

LO to Servo : Vout = 2.3 Vpp / Pout = 11.21 dBm at f = 35.5 MHz

RF to PC   :   Vout = 354 mVpp / Pout = -5.1 dBm at f= 35.5 MHz

The measurements were done using an oscilloscope with 50 ohms load impedance. Unfortunately the photos are not available from the camera.

The PMC HV drops off more offen lately.

The PMC acted like it was sleeping. The HV slider was dead. The MC locked instantly as the PMC had transmission.

I locked the PMC and the MC followed instantly.

 The PMC  behavior is not changed.

 The PMC was locked and the MC followed intantly

The PMC locked manually. MC  grabbed lock instantaniously

 PMC locked

 PMC locked.

PMC needed to be locked manually.

The PMC was unlocked earlier this morning, for ~20min, presumably from the rocks next door.  I relocked it.

Then, a few min ago, the PMC suddenly decided that it wouldn't lock with a transmission greater than ~0.7 .  I found that the laser temp adjust on the FSS screen was at -1.9ish.  I put it back to zero, and now the PMC locks happily again.  I think we got into a PSL mode-hopping temperature region on accident.

I made a python script for relocking PMC.
It currently lives in /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/PSL/PMC/PMClocker.py.

I think the hardest part for this kind of locker is the scan speed. I could make the scan relatively fast by using pyNDS.
The basic algorithm is as follows.

1. Turns off the servo by C1:PSL-PMC_SW1.

2. Scans C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP using ezcastep.bin. Default settings for ezcastep is

ezcastep.bin C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP -s 0.1 0.01 10000

So, it steps by 0.01 for 10000 times with interval of 0.1 sec.

3. Get C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD and C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP online 1 sec data using pyNDS.

4. If it finds a tall peak in C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD, kills ezcastep.bin process, sets C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP to the value where the tall peak was found, and then turns on the servo.

5. If tall peak wasn't found, go back to 3 and get data again.

6. If C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP reaches near -7 V or 0 V, it kills previous ezcastep.bin process and turns the sign of the scan.

I tested this script several times. It sometimes passes over TEM00 (because of the dead time in online pyNDS?), but it locks PMC with in ~10 sec.
Currently, you have to run this to relock PMC because I don't know how to make this an autolocker.

I think use of pyNDS can be applied for finding IR resonance using ALS, too.
I haven't checked it yet becuase c1ioo is down, but ALS version lives in /users/yuta/scripts/findIRresonance.py. ALS may be easier in that we can use fast channels and nice filter modules.

Other scripts:
 I updated /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/general/toggler.py. It now has "lazymode". When lazymode, it toggles automatically with interval of 1 sec until you Ctrl-c.

 Also, I moved damprestore.py from my users directory to /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/SUS/damprestore.py. It restores suspension damping of a specified mirror when watchdog shuts down the damping.

I thought we rewrite auto lockers once per year, but this time it took us only a month. I wrote it for PMC on May 24. Is it not working?

Could someone make it more clear why some scripts are written on bash, others on sh or python? I think we should elaborate a strict order. Masha and I can work on it if anyone else considers this issue as a problem.

I know.
I just wanted to use pyNDS for this kind of scanning & locking situation.
c1ioo was down for the weekend and I couldn't test my script for ALS, so I used it for PMC.

But I think PMClocker.py can relock PMC faster because it can sweep C1:PSL-PMC_RAMP continuously and can get continuous data of C1:PSL-PMC_PMCTRANSPD.

 In May of 2013 Den wrote a PMC Autolocker because he ignored / didn't want to read anyone else's code. Later that year Yuta also wrote another one from scratch for the same reasons.

I tried to use both today, but neither one runs. Yuta's one doesn't run because he was using a bunch of private yuta library stuff in the yuta directory. That kind of programming style is pretty useless for us since it never works after some time.

So I re-activated and tested the PMCAutolock bash script (it is actually a symbolic link called "PMCAutolock" which points to AutoLock.sh). These scripts are all basically the same:

They turn off the loop (or turn down the gain) and then scan the PZT, look for a resonance, and then activate the loop.

One problem with the logic has been that turning off the loop makes the gain so low that the peak flashes by too fast. But leaving the loop ON and just sweeping with the gain turned down to -10 dB is also not good. That only reduces the UGF from 1 kHz to ~100 Hz. What we want is more like a 10 Hz UGF while scanning the length. SO, I edited the script to turn down the modulation depth on the EOM by that factor. After acquiring lock, it returns all settings to the nominal levels as defined on the PSL_SETTINGS screen.

I've tested it a few times and it seems to work OK. You can run it from the yellow shabang button on the PMC screen.

I also changed the .bashrc aliases for the MEDM command so that if you type medm_good at the command line you get MEDM screens with scalable fonts. So you can stretch the screens.

I used a script (~PSL/PMC/testAutoLocker.sh) to unlock the PMC and run autlocker ~100 times to see how robust the new autlocker is.

It failed to grab it 2 out of 137 times. During those times it just went on trying to ramp the PZT even after it had gone to a rail. Once someone resurrects Rob's 'trianglewave'  script we should be OK. Even so, I think this is good enough. Please try this out via the yellow button next time the PMC needs to be locked.

It usually takes 10-30 seconds to lock, depending upon where the fringe is compared to the upper voltage rail. Good enough.

PMC wasn't locking. Had to power down c1psl. Did burt restore. Still not great.

I think many of the readbacks on the PMC MEDM screen are now bogus and misleading since the PMC RF upgrade that Gautam did awhile ago. We ought to fix the screen and clearly label which readbacks and actuators are no longer valid.

Also, the locking procedure is not so nice. The output V adjust doesn't work anymore with BLANK enabled. Would be good to make an autolocker script if we find a visitor wanting to do something fun.

After I recovered the lock of PMC, I found that the PMC transmission was quite low. It was about 0.26 in the EPICS display.

I zeroed the PSL temperature feedback value which had been -2.3 and then the PMC transmission went back to a normal value of 0.83.

I believe it was because the PSL was running with two different oscillation modes due to the big temperature offset.

Kiwamu and I found that the first lens in the PMC mode matching telescope was mislabeled. It is supposed to be PLCX-25.4-77.3-C and was labeled as such but in fact it was PLCX-25.4-103.0-C. This is why the PMC mode matching was bad. We swapped the lens for the correct one and got the PMC visibility of 82%. The attached plot shows the beam scans before and after the PMC. The data were taken with the wrong lens. The ABCD model shown in the plot uses the lens that was there at the time - PLCX-25.4-103.0-C. The model for the PMC is just the waist of 0.371 mm at the nominal location. The snap shot of the ABCD file is attached. The calculation includes the KTP for FI and LiNb for EOM with 4 cm length. The distances are as measured on the table.

 The PMC mode matching was initially done at low power ~150 mW. It was expected and found that at full power ~2 W (injection current 2.1 A) the mode matching got much worse:

the visibility degraded from 80% to 50% (1 - refl locked/refl unlocked) . The thermal lensing could be in the laser, EOM, or FI.

The first attached plot shows the scan of the beam after the EOM at low and full laser power. At full power the waist position is 10 mm after the turning mirror after the EOM and the waist size is 310 um.

The second plot shows the ABCD calculation for the mode matching solution.

I removed the MM lens PLCX-25.4-77.3-C and placed the PLCX-25.4-180.3-UV about 20 mm after the first PMC periscope mirror (the second mirror after the EOM).

The PMC visibility improved to 94% and the power through the PMC, as measured by the PMC transmission PD, went up by a factor of 2.