Thanks to some expertly timed coffee from Ignacio, I have been able to achieve indefnite locks of the DRMI, first on a 1F/3F mix (P:REFL11, S: REFL165, M:AS55), and then purely on 3F (P:REFL33, S:REFL165, S:REFL165). MICH is currently actuated on the ITMs. 

I saved a snapshot of the current settings so I don't lose my settings. I think one thing that prevented earlier recipies from working is that whitening gains may have changed, which we don't typically note down when reporting input matrix settings

My current settings for 3F locking:

REFL33:

+30dB whitening gain, +136 demod phase

PRCL = 9 x I - 200 counts

REFL165:

+24dB whitening gain, +3 demod phase

SRCL = 1 x I, MICH = 5 x Q - 1000counts

MICH: G=-0.03; Acq FM4/5; Trig 2/3/6/9

PRCL: G=-0.003; Acq FM4/5; Trig 1/2/6/9

SRCL: G=0.2; Acq FM4/5; Trig 2/3/6/9

I've injected excitations into the control filter outputs via the LSC-FFC FMS (and notched the frequencies in the control filters themselves), and noted GPS times for offline sensing analysis. (Namely the 10 minutes following 1125398900)

Handing off to pure 3F was a little finicky at first, I needed to use some pretty large offsets in the MICH_B and PRCL_B FMs. (-1000 and -200 counts respectively). Once these offsets were found, the DRMI can acquire on 3F. Alignment is pretty important, too.  Acquiring is much faster when the loop gains are "too high." i.e. I see a fair amount of gain peaking at ~300Hz. Nevertheless, things are stable enough as is that I didn't feel like digging into reducing the gains to quieter values. 

FOSC-2-64-50-L-1-H64F-2
Single mode coupler, 2x2, 1064nm +/-20nm, 50/50 ratio, 900micron loose tube jacket, Hi1060flex fiber, 1m fiber length, FC/APC connectors

Four of these items ordered yesterday from http://afwtechnologies.com.au/sm_coupler.html

I've now made a collection of sensing matrix measurements. 

In all of the plots below, the radial scale is logarithmic, each grid line is a factor of 10. The units of the radial direction are calibrated into demod board output Volts per meter. The same radial scale is used on all plots and subplots.

I did two PRMI measurements: with MICH locked and excited with either the ITMS or the BS + PRM compensation. This tells us if our PRM compensation is working; I think it is indeed ok. I though I remembered that we came up with a number for the SRM compensation, but I haven't been able to find it yet. 

The CARM sensing int he PRFPMI measurement has the loop gain at the excitation frequency undone. All excitations were simultaneously notched out of all control filters, via the NotchSensMat filters. 

The angular scale is set to the analog I and Q signals; the dotted lines show the digitial phase rotation angle used at the time of measurement. 

Nice going. I think the LLO / LHO scheme is to acquire on 1F and then cdsutils avg to get the 3F offsets. The thinking is that that 1F signals have less intrinsic offset than the 3F signals, so we want to be use digital offsets for the 3F locks.

We looked at the DRMI noise spectrum and chose new excitation frequencies such that the lines are lower in frequency than before (~300 Hz instead of 800 Hz) and also not in some noisy region.

New filters is saved and loaded for all LSC DOFs.

Frequencies are:

• CARM: 309.21 Hz
• DARM: 307.88 Hz
• MICH: 311.1 Hz
• PRCL: 313.31 Hz
• SRCL: 315.17 Hz

POP110 and POP22 demod angles were adjusted for DRMI lock. 

Last week, I never achieved a fully 1F lock, REFL165 was used for SRCL. Tonight, we created input matrix settings for pure 1F locking, and did some signal mixing to reduce the PRCL to SRCL coupling. The PRCL to MICH coupling was already low, since AS55 is fairly insensitive to PRCL. 

Similarly, for the 3F signals, some signal mixing of REFL33I and REFL165Q was used to reduce the PRCL to MICH coupling. The PRCL to SRCL coupling in REFL165 isn't too bad, so no compensation was done. Interestingly, in this setting, the 3F MICH and SRCL signals agree with the 1F signals on their zero crossing, so no offsets are needed. REFL33 I does need an offset, however, to match the REFL11I PRCL zero crossing. 

The DRMI acquires faster with SRCL set to 165I. Once acquired, the 1F/3F can be made smoothly, and both settings are very stable. The sensing matrix in each setting is consistent with each other. (The PRCL and SRCL lines in AS55 change, but really I shouldn't even plot them, since they're not very coherent). 

For some reason, these show a sign flip relative to last week's measurements. The relative angles are consistent, though. 

Next up is finding the right coefficient for the SRM in the MICH output matrix, when actuating on the BS. 

Just a heads up while I'm out for a bit: the delay line is currently installed in the 55MHz modulation path. 

I'll be back later, and will revert the setup.

With the adjustable delay line box installed in the 55MHz modulation path, I've measured the PRMI sensing matrix as a function of delay / relative phase between the 11MHz and 55MHz modulations. The relative frequency difference of 44MHz tells us that this should be cyclical after ~23nsec of delay, but losses in the delay cable change this; see Koji's elogs about the modulation cancellation setup for details. 

TL;DR: Nothing really changes, other than REFL33 optical gain. MICH/PRCL angles remain degenerate.

The results aren't so surprising. The demod angles for the 55MHz diodes don't even change, since the same 55MHz signal is used for the modulator and demodulators, so delaying it before the split should go unnoticed. Most of these measurements were made during the same lock stretch, PRCL on REFL11 I and MICH on AS55Q.

The only signals we would expect to change much are ones that have significant contriubtions from field products influenced by both modulations. None of the 1F PDs are like this, nor is REFL165. REFL33 is the odd man out, where the +44MHz field produced as a -11MHz sideband on the +55MHz sideband beats with the +11MHz sideband (and the same with the signs flipped). I made a simulation for the 40m poster at the March 2015 LVC meeting, but I don't think it ever made it to the ELOG. 

So:

Here are the results for the 0ns and 4ns cases, as an illustration of what changes (REFL33), and what doesn't (everything else). Again, these are calibrated to Volts out of the analog demod boards per meter of DoF motion. 

So, since REFL33 is the only one really changing, let's just look at it by itself:

Qualitatively, the change in magnitude looks similar to the simulation result. The demod angles fall by some roughly linear amount. The angle difference is even more stationary than predicted there, though. 

Tonight we noticed that the REFL_DC signal has gone bipolar, even though the whitening gain is 0 dB and the whitening filter is requested to be OFF.

We should check out the switch operation of several ofthe LSC channels in the daytime - where is the procedure for this diagnostic posted?

While investigating the BIO situation with the LSC machine and the iscaux2 processor last night, we wondered if maybe the Anti-Aliasing filters were mistakenly disabled. But why do we need these anyway?

Our ADCs digitize at 64 kHz and there is a digital lowpass in the IOP at 5 kHz before we downsample to 16 kHz. So mainly we're trying to prevent some aliasing at the 64 kHz IOP rate. But our analog AA filter is a 8th order ELP at 7570 Hz, so its overkill.

So, I propose that we bypas the AA via hardwiring the board and implement a 10 kHz pole in the whitening board (D990694) before the whitening by turning R127, etc. into a 0.1 uF cap. Along with the 100 Ohm series resistor, this will make a pole at ~15 kHz. Probably ought to check that the input resistor is metal film. Also, if we replace C158/C159, etc. with a 0.47 nF cap, we'll get 2 poles at 35 kHz to limit the higher frequencies from saturating.

About the analog CARM control with ALS:

We're looking at using a Sigg designed remotely switchable delay line box on the currently undelayed side of the ALS DFD beat. For a beat frequency of 50MHz, one cycle is 20ns, this thing has 24ns total delay capability, so we should be able to get pretty close to a zero crossing of the analog I or Q outputs of the demod board. This can be used as IN2 for the common mode board. 

Gautam is testing the functionality of the delay and switching, and should post a link to the DCC page of the schematic. Rana and Koji have been discussing the implementation of the remote switching (RCG vs. VME). 

I spent some time this afternoon trying to lock the X arm in this way, but instead of at IR resonance, just wherever the I output of the DFD had a zero crossing. However, I didn't give enough thought to the loop shapes; Koji helped me think it through. Tomorrow, I'll make a little pomona box to go before the CM IN2 that will give the ALS loop shape a pole where we expect the CARM coupled cavity pole to be (~120Hz), so that the REFL11 and ALS signals have a similar shape when we're trying to transition. 

The common mode board does have a filter for this kind of thing for single arm tests, but puts in a zero as well, as it expects the single arm pole, which isn't present in the ALS sensing, so maybe I'll whip up something appropriate for this, too. 

1. POP110 RF amps are powered from the cross connect. But that +15V block has GND connections that are not connected to the ground.
    i.e. The ground potential is given by the signal ground. (Attachment 1)

    This is caused by the misuse of the DIN connector  blocks. The hod side uses an isolated block assuming a fuse is inserted.
    However, the ground sides also have the isolated blocks

2. One of the POP110 RF cable has a suspicious shiled. The rigidity of the cable is low, suggesting the broken shield. (Attachment 2)

Fixed! I noticed that whitening gain changes weren't having any effect on CM_SLOW. I then checked REFL_DC, where this also seemed to be the case. Since the gain is controlled via VME machine, and whitening filter switching is controlled via RCG, I figured there must be something wrong with the board. I checked all of the DC PD signals, which share a whitening filter board, and they all had the same symptoms. 

I went and peeked at the board, and it turns out the backplane cable had fallen off. 

I plugged it in, things look ok. 

Something odd is happening with the CM board. Measuring from either input to OUT1 (the "slow output") shows a nice flat response up until many 10s of kHz. 

However, when I connect my idependently confirmed 120Hz LPF to either input, the pole frequency gets moved up to ~360Hz and the DC gain falls some 10dB. This happens regardless if the input is used or not, I saw this shape at a tee on the output of the LPF when the other leg of the tee was connected to a CM board input. 

This has sabotaged my high bandwidth ALS efforts. I will investigate the board's input situation tomorrow.

As it turns out, our version of the common mode board does not have high input impedence. I think this is what is messing with the lowpass. 

I added photos of the PCB to our 40m DCC page about this board: D1500308, wherein you can see that we have Revision B. 

On the aLIGO wiki's CommonModeServo page, one finds that high input impedence was added in Revision E. At LIGO-D040180, one finds this was implemented via an additional dual AD829 instrumentation amplifier stage before the input amplification stage that exists on our board.

Also, I find that the boosts installed are the default 40:4k, 1k:20k, 1k:20k, 500:10k pole zero pairs. Given our 30-40kHz UGF for CARM thus far, maybe we would like to lower some of these boost corner frequencies, to actually be able to use them; so far we only use the first two.

[Steve, gautam]

We fixed the problematic DIN connectors on 1Y2, by swapping out the 3 DIN connector blocks that were of the wrong type (see attached image for the difference between the types appropriate for "Live" and "Ground").

Before doing anything, Eric turned the Wenzel multiplier off. We have not turned this back on.

Then we turned off the power supply unit at the base of 1Y2, removed the connectors from the rail, swapped out the connectors, reinstalled them on the rail, and turned the power supply back on. After swapping these out, we verified with a multimeter that between each pair of "Live" and "Ground" blocks, there was ~15V. We could now use the third unused pair of blocks to power the delay line phase shifter box, though for the moment, it remains powered by the bench power supply. 

1. The delay-line box is now hooked up to the cross connect +15V supply.

2. The broken RF cable was fixed.

It is actually the POP22 cable.
Therefore, we might see significant change of the signal size for POP22.
Be aware.

RG405 + SMA connector rule

- Don't bend the cable at the connector.

- Always use a cap on the connector. It is a part of the impedance matching.

- Use transparent shrink tube for strain relieving and isolation. This allow us to check the condition of the shield without removing the cover.

Steve and I turned on the box this morning so that the IMC would lock again.

For future reference, remember that one should turn off the Marconi output before turning off the RF distribution box. Don't drive the input of unpowered RF amps.

Steve and I turned on the box this morning so that the IMC would lock again.

For future reference, remember that one should turn off the Marconi output before turning off the RF distribution box. Don't drive the input of unpowered RF amps.

Once again, the transmitted X green beam was showing enormous intensity fluctuations (50x higher than normal). Last month, I reduced the AUX X laser current from 2.0A to 1.9A, which I thought had fixed it somehow.

However, when I sent to the end to check it out today, I found the SR560 which is there to amplify the green PDH error signal before being sent to the AA board was overloading. Not so surprising, since the error signal was similarly noisy as the transmitted light. 

I turned the SR560 gain down, and, after relocking, the transmitted light was stable. I've turned the AUX X laser current back up to 2.0A, it's previous nominal value, and the green transmitted light is still stable. 

I'm a little mystified that the 560 could intefere with the loop, since it is not in the feedback path. Could it be that when it is overloading, it sends garbage backwards out of the inputs? But even then, its input is not connected to the real error point, but the buffered monitor port. Could it be interfering via the power line?

Before, I had hesitated adding gain to the PDH board's monitor point for DAQ purposes, because the motivation of the port is to provide a 1:1 version of the real error signal, and I didn't want to add gain to the AA board, because we normally don't have gain in those boards, and I didn't want to surprise future people. The SR560 was meant to be temporary, but as often happens, it was forgotten. Now, I think I will add gain to the error monitor buffer stage of the PDH boards. 

To get around the problems between the pomona LPF and low CM board input impedance, I've placed the LPF at the CM board fast output. This won't work as a permanent solution, since we only want to lowpass the ALS signal, but it should be fine for a single arm test. 

However, I kept getting blown out of lock when turning up the AO gain, but well before I really expect any real action from the fast path. Looking at the OLTF, I was seeing some large spike at ~36kHz nearing 0dB loop gain with unstable phase. This prompted me to look at the ALS error signal out to higher bandwidth with the SR785; before I only ever looked at it through the digital system. 

So, with the X arm locked via POX11 I, and ITMY misaligned to use AS55 as an out of loop sensor, I measured the spectrum of the I ouput of the ALS X demod board (which was set to be near a zero crossing via the delay line), and the Q Mon of the AS55 demod board. 

Both ALS and AS55 show a sharp line at around 36.5kHz, so something is really happening in the IFO at this frequency. Koji might have seen an indication of this back in March.

What's going on here? And what would be different about PRFPMI that wouldn't have made this a problem for locking?

 I looked at REFL11 and REFL55 during PRMI lock - the line is there.

In fact, it is even visible in REFL11 I from a single bounce off of the PRM (ITMs misaligned).

This led me to look at the IMC error point (via the OUT2 on the servo board, no compensation for the input gain). Also there!

One the Wiki (https://wiki-40m.ligo.caltech.edu/40mHomePage), we have a Mech Resonance page for mechanical frequencies and a PEM page where we want to list the sources of all of our environmental lines. So please put in an entry when you find out what's at this frequency. This reminds me that I need to upload my MC2 COMSOL eigenmode analysis.

Given the RF component power supply grounding, POP110, POP22 and REFL165 all changed somewhat. They have all been rephased for the DRMI, as they were before. 

I tweaked the 3F DRMI settings, and chose to phase REFL165I to PRCL, instead of SRCL as before, to try and minimize the PRCL->MICH coupling instead of the SRCL->MICH coupling. 

With these settings, I once locked the DRMI for ~5 seconds with the arms held off on ALS, during which I could see some indications of neccesary demod angle changes. Haven't yet gotten longer, but we're getting there...

[ericq, Gautam]

We can reliably lock the DRMI with the arms held off on ALS. 

I have not been able to hold it at zero CARM offset; but this is probably just a matter of setting up the right loop shapes with enough phase margin to handle the CARM fluctuations ( or figuring out high bandwidth ALS...)

Right now, it's the most stable at CARM offsets larger (in magnitude) than -1. Positive CARM offsets don't work well for some reason. 

The key to getting this to work was to futz around, starting from the misaligned arms DRMI settings, until brief locks were seen (triggering all 3 DRMI DoFs on POP22, since the correct AS110 sign was amiguous). I could tell from how the control signals responded to gain changes that REFL165Q, which was being used as the MICH error signal, was seeing significant cross coupling from both PRCL and SRCL, suggesting the demod angle of REFL165 had to be adjusted. I randomly tweaked the REFL165 demod angle until a 20 second lock was achieved, with excitations running. Then, I downloaded that data and analyzed the sensing matrix. This showed me that the REFL33 demod angle was ok, and the PRCL-from-SRCL subtraction factor determined with the arms misaligned was still valid. The main difference was indeed the SRCL angle in REFL165.

With the REFL165 demod angle properly adjusted, the DRMI would briefly lock, but the DRMI had become somewhat misaligned at this point, and the SRC could be seen to mode hop. Interestingly, the higer order modes had an opposite sign in AS110, with respect to the TM00. At that point, I went back to PRMI on carrier to dither-align the BS and PRM. 

With alignment set, the DRMI would lock on TM00 readily, still only triggering on POP22. I set the AS110 angle, and moved SRCL triggering over to that, which sped up acquisition even more. The input matrix and FM gains from no-arms DRMI still work for acquistion; UGF servos were used to adjust overall gains a bit. 

At CARM offsets larger in magnitude than -1, the DRMI lock seems indefinite. I just broke it to see how fast it would acquire; 3 seconds. 

Lastly, here is the sensing matrix at CARM offset of -4, measured over five minutes. REFL11 is the only degenerate looking PD. Thus, I feel like controlling the DRMI of the DRFPMI should be more managable than I had feared.

(I didn't include/excite CARM or DARM, because I'm not sure it would really mean anything at such a large CARM offset)

Looking good. How many meters of CARM is '-1 counts'?

Nice!!

Fast ALS control continues to elude me. 

I fixed my LPF to take the input impedance of the CM board input into account; this unfortunately results in about -12dB DC gain of the ALS signal due to voltage-divider-y things, but by my estimation, this still puts the DFD noise above the input-referred voltage noise of the input AD829 on the CM board, so it'll do for now. The 120Hz pole shows up as expected when comparing the usual digital channels and the CM_SLOW output, and is digitally compensated with a zero at 120Hz (with a digital pole at 5k so nothing blows up). 

However, there seems to be some zero in the analog path somewhere that spoils the loop shape for the AO path. Here's a measurement of the X arm OLG from 10-100kHz, when the digital control is happening with ~100Hz UGF via ALS X I -> CM IN2 -> CM_SLOW -> LSC_CARM -> ETMX, and there is some AO action via ALS X I -> CM IN2 -> IMC IN2

The peak is recognizable as the gain peaking in the IMC servo (and changes predictably with changes to the IMC crossover and loop gains), which is expected. However, one can see that the magnitude is roughly flat before the peak, and the phase is around 0. With the 1/f LPF, we should see some downward slope and phase starting around -90. 

Thus, there must be some zero in the fast or common path, maybe at a few kHz where the digital loop wouldn't really see its effect. I'm not sure what it could be at this point in time.

One thought I had is that I never really checked the TF of DFD response to frequency modulation of the RF beat. I used an SR785 to drive the external FM input of a Fluke 1061A synthesizer, and saw it to be totally flat from 1-100kHz with carriers from 30-100MHz, so that should be fine. (For a little while I was confused by what seemed to be some heavy high-passing going on, but it turns out that the Fluke just can't push much low frequency FM; the manual says -3dB at 20Hz.)

Use LISO - see what it tells you. I would think that you should make a differential RC filter to get the right behavior. (e.g. 1K on each leg and 1 uF between them)

Each leg of the diff input of the board has a 4k input impedance.

But surely the AO input to the MC servo should also make sense independently.

LISO confirms that I did my algebra right in picking the component values, and shows no extra zeros. 

I also took some TFs with the SR785 and confirmed that both CM board inputs behave the same, and that including the LPF on the input gives the expected 1/f shape at the slow and fast outputs.

I've been using an SR560 to experiment with differnent pole frequencies, to try and cancel the mystery zero. It's after the ALS demod board, before the pomona LPF with a gain of five. 

A pole frequency of 3kHz seems to recover sensible loop shapes. I've been able to crossover the AO path to make a nice long phase bubble which isn't the prettiest, but seems workable.

Getting to this point is now almost entirely scripted and repeatable; one just has to make sure that the ALS beat has the correct sign and adjust the delay line length. Most frustratingly, due to the dependence of the ALS gain on beat frequency / magnitude / delay, which can all vary on the order of a few dB, the AO gain settings to get to the crossed over point are not always the same, so at the end it's a lot of small steps and frequent loop measurements. 

The FSS crossover and overall IMC loop gain have to be pretty actively managed too. It's all too easy to drive the pockel's cell crazy. And if it's going crazy on its own anyways, there's no hope in trying to pile ALS sensing noise on top of it... It would really help in this effort to fix the whole PC situation up. 

Unfortunately, lock is lost when increasing the overall gain on the common mode board even by 1dB. We've seen in the single arm tests, that the gain settings have an appreciable difference in offset between them. Maybe this step is more than what the loop can handle? Or maybe it's the voltage glitches... Maybe some gain reallocation can put me on a region of the slider that glitches less.

In terms of the mystery plant features, I figure I'd like to take the analog TF of AO control signal to, say, AS55, and see what may or may not be there. I just haven't done this tonight since it would involve recabling the analyzer, and I still need frequent loop measurements to get to the crossed over state. Having ITMY misaligned and using the digital AS55Q spectrum as an out of loop monitor has been very helpful. 

I've taken over one of the SENSMAT oscillators for a test of the EPICS system.

These are the channels I've modified, with their original and current settings:

controls@donatella|~ > caget C1:LSC-OUTPUT_MTRX_7_13 C1:CAL-SENSMAT_CARM_OSC_FREQ C1:CAL-SENSMAT_CARM_OSC_CLKGAIN
C1:LSC-OUTPUT_MTRX_7_13          -1
C1:CAL-SENSMAT_CARM_OSC_FREQ    309.21
C1:CAL-SENSMAT_CARM_OSC_CLKGAIN   0
controls@donatella|~ > caget C1:LSC-OUTPUT_MTRX_7_13 C1:CAL-SENSMAT_CARM_OSC_FREQ C1:CAL-SENSMAT_CARM_OSC_CLKGAIN
C1:LSC-OUTPUT_MTRX_7_13           0
C1:CAL-SENSMAT_CARM_OSC_FREQ      0.1
C1:CAL-SENSMAT_CARM_OSC_CLKGAIN   3
controls@donatella|~ >

[ericq, Gautam]

Highlight of the night: the DRFPMI was held at arm powers > 110 for 20 seconds. ALS feedback was still running though, but so was some nonzero REFL11 AO path action.

In short, time was spent finding the right FM trigger settings to keep the DRMI locked while CARM is fluctuating through resonance, what CARM offset to acquire DRMI lock at, order of operations of turning on AO / turning up overall CARM gain, etc. 

Sadly, for the past hour or so, the DRMI has refused to stay locked for more than ~20 seconds, so I haven't been able to push things much further. This is a shame, since I'm very nearly at the equivalent point in the PRFPMI locking script where the ALS control is turned off completely. 

Progress was made. CARM was stably locked on RF only. DARM was RF only for a few moments before I typed in a wrong number...

A change was made to the LSC model's triggering section to make the DRMI hold more reliably at zero CARM offset. Namely, the POPDC signal now has its absolute value taken before the trigger matrix. Even unwhitened, it occaisionally would somehow go negative enough to break the DRMI trigger.

AUX X laser was acting up again. As before, tweaking laser current is the temporary fix.

Please clarify: I wonder if you were at the zero offset for CARM and DARM or not. I am 25% excited right now.

Yes, this was at the full DRFPMI resonance.

Awesome

Give us a lockloss or other kind of time series plot so we can bask in the glory.

Look upon this three second lock, ye Mighty, and rejoice!

I hope the grappa was already cold, and ready to drink! 

To get a better look at how to do fast ALS, I took some "Plant TF" measurements of the X arm. 

Specifically, in single arm POX lock and the both Y TMs misaligned, I used the SR785 to inject into EXC B of the common mode board with the CM fast output gain and IMC IN2 gain both at 0dB, and looked at the transfer function of that excitation into the analog ALSX I and AS55 Q out-of-loop signals. (ALSX I tuned to a zero crossing via the delay line box as usual.)

My expectation was to see them only differ by the IR single arm cavity pole, which should be around 8-9kHz ( FSR/450 = 3.9MHz/450 ~ 8.6kHz). The green cavity pole at ~18k shouldn't show up since we're not touching the green light, and the IMC pole at ~3.8kHz shouldn't show up since this is well within the IMC loop bandwidth and we're actuating on its error point.  

Instead, I see them differ by a double pole at 4.3kHz. (or zero, if you look at it the reciprocal way). Vectfit actually fits them as a slightly complex pair, with a Q of 0.53/ I imagine that the wiggles are due to the digital control loop.

My question is: why is there a double zero here? Where has my reasoning led me astray?

ALS is the comparison of the PSL laser freq vs the end laser freq that is locked to the arm cavity resonant freq

On the other hand, the AS55 PDH is the comparison of the PSL laser freq after the IMC vs the arm cavity resonant freq. Here the PDH signal involves the arm cavity pole.

In total you observe the difference by the IMC cav pole + the arm cav pole.

Ah, I understand it now! Since the additive offset path keeps the post-cavity frequency TF flat, the pre-cavity frequency must grow above the cavity pole, which is why ALS sees a zero. 

Ok, so this means we want to apply two lowpasses to the ALS signal for use as fast CARM control, if we want it to be capable of scalar blending with REFL11: one at ~120Hz to imitate the CARM coupled cavity pole present in REFL11, and one at ~3.8kHz to undo the "IMC cavity zero" present in ALS. 

At this point, I'm starting to prefer an active circuit to do this lowpassing; using LISO to check designs for two cascaded passive LPFs it looks like the ALS signal would have to be attenuated by a factor of ~20 at DC if we don't use resistors smaller than 1k, given the low input impedence of the CM board. 

[ericq, Gautam]

Despite our best efforts, the grappa remains out of reach: the DRFPMI was not locked tonight. 

We spent a fair amount of time with the AUX X laser, as it was glitching madly again.

DRMI was finicky until I found some more reliable triggering settings; namely aquiring with AS110Q, but after that transitioning the trigger to the same POP22+POPDC combo as PRCL and MICH. With this in place, the DRMI lock seems really indefinite no matter what CARM seems to do; or at least, I always lost lock due to CARM shenanigans after this. 

The most frustrating part was the fact that I just couldn't cross over the AO path stably. It never "clicked" into high circulating power as it normally does (either in PRFPMI, or how it was last week). Various crossover filters and tweaks were attempted to no avail. Morning traffic starts soon, so we're calling it a night. 

I've made a cascaded passive 2-pole pomona box for fast ALS use, using LISO to check that it'll give the right shape when hooked up to the CM board's input stage. 

First stage is a 133Ohm + 10uF cap for ~120Hz LP, second is 1.15kOhm + 47nF cap for ~3.8kHz LP. The DC gain is ~0.75, which is much better than what I was doing before. The second stage would normally make a 2.9kHz LPF on its own, but the loading of the input stage moves the corner up. 

It seems the 133 Ohm resistor is a reasonable load on the output AD829 of the ALS demod board (short-circuit output current of 32mA and a series output resistor of 499Ohm). To be able to use the digitized ALSX I and the lowpassed analog version simultaneously, I had to buffer the signal with a SR560 before the pomona box, otherwise the signals looked distorted. This isn't a good long-term solution. Maybe I can used the further-buffered differential output to drive the LPF+CM board. 

The LISO files used to model the filter and CM board input stage, and fit the pole frequencies are attached. 

I made some attempts to get the AO path going today, but I suspect this daytime noise is just too much; the PC drive seems too irritable

[ericq, Gautam]

For real this time.

Fast ALS was still a problem tonight. I don't think high frequency ALS noise saturating the PC drive is the issue; I put two 10k poles before the CM board (shooting for just 2-3kHz bandwidth), and the PC drive levels would be stable and low up until the lockloss, which was always conincident with a step in the AO gain.

After working with that for a few hours, we turned back to our more standard locking attempts. First, we dither aligned the PRMI, and then centered the REFL beam on REFL11. It's hard to say for certain, but we may have been a little close to the edge of the PD. The only other thing that differed from Monday's attempts was using 6dB less AO gain when trying the up the overall gain. 

The script now reliably breaks through to stable high powers, we had a handful of pure-RF locks tonight. The digital DARM gain needs tuning, and the CARM bandwidth still isn't at its final state, but these are very tractable. Off the top of my head, the way forward now includes:

• Set proper final DARM loop shape
• Set final CARM loop shape
• Take full sensing matrix
• Make 1F handoff
• Set up the CAL model to produce (at least roughly) calibrated spectra
• measure noise couplings and other fun stuff

Unrelated: I feel that the PRC angular FF may have deteriorated a bit. I'm leaving the PRC locked on carrier to collect data for wiener filter recalculation. 

Great job!
Many thanks Eric, Gautam, and all the current and past colleagues
for your tremendous contributions to bring the 40m to this achievement.