I asked John Z to talk with Jamie and then install a new NDS2 server software for us. Jamie may know if this happened or was foiled by the linux1 RAID failure.

In any case, our pyNDS stuff ought to be able to talk to NDS2 or our old NDS1 stuff, I hope.

 That's good news. I was ready to give up and say we should vent and remove the baffles. It will be interesting if you can find out how much the sensors and OL and IPANG are off from their pre-pump values. We should think about how to have better references.

Also, what is the story with the large drift we are seeing in IPANG?

 If its true that there have been large flashes, then there indeed might be beer. But first I'd have to see a calibrated plot. And make sure that the flashes are not overamplified due to a whitening filter imbalance.

Is it the readout of a PD with no whitening/antiwhitening? IF so, its much easier to believe.

  At first I thought that this was goofy, but then I logged in and saw that Megatron only has 8GB of RAM. I guess that used to be cool in the old days, but now is tiny (my laptop has 8 GB of RAM). I'll see if someone around has some free RAM for a 4600; in the meantime, I've killed a MEDM that was running on there and using up a few hundred MB.

Run your ssh-MEDMs elsewhere or else I'll make a cronjob to kill them periodically.

  Don't use resonant gain - it can lead to a loop instability since it makes the loop have 3 UGFs.

Just use a elliptic bandstop filter at this harmonic frequency separately for each test mass. There are many detailed examples of this in elog entries from Rob and I over the past ~10 years. This bandstop should get clicked on automatically after lock acquisition.

I took the two 'flat' 2" mirrors over to Downs and Garilynn showed me how to measure them with the old Wyko machine.

The files are now loaded onto our Dropbox folder - analysis in process. From eyeball, it seems as if the RoCs are in the neighborhood of ~5 km, with the local perturbations giving ~10-15 km of curvature depending upon position (few nm of sage over ~1 cm scales)

Koji's matlab code should be able to give somewhat more quantitative answers...

Ed: Here you are. "0966" looks good. It has RoC of ~4km. "0997" has a big structure at the middle. The bump is 10nmPV (KA)

  Whereas the sensing matrix coefficients for ITMX/ITMY in REFL_I indicate an actuation imbalance, the disparity in the ITMX/ITMY to AS_Q elements does not. However, they do indicate why there is a PRM to AS_Q coupling at all.

I would recommend setting up the triggering so that the REFL & AS whitening is turned on AFTER lock acquisition and using a frequency of ~100-300 Hz for the sensing matrix measurement to fix these issues.

  How about posting a logic flow diagram? Is the idea to trigger only on the power signals to determine the lock state? Is the hysteresis going to be done in the same way as the main filter bank triggers?

Please stop power cycling computers. This is not an acceptable operation (as Jamie already wrote before). When you don't know what to do besides power cycling the computer, just stop and do something else or call someone who knows more. Every time you kill the power to a computer you are taking a chance on damaging it or corrupting some hard drive.

In this case, the right thing to do would be to hook up the external keyboard and monitor directly to c1sus to diagnose things.

NO MORE TOUCHING THE POWER BUTTON.

 I doubt that it has truly disappeared. Can you please make a measurement of it and quantify the hysteresis using some angle sensor?

I measured the dark noise and regular intensity noise in MC trans tonight to get some estimate for the free running spectrum that the Chas ISS must overcome. PDF is attached.

XML file is /users/rana/dtt/MC-trans_130325.xml

The RIN normalization was done by using the mean of the SUM time series. The dark noise was measured by misaligning MC2 and making the same measurement with the bright normalization.

  Please attach the data file of the measurement - its hard to get the real information out of picture. In general, WE should always include the code / explanation of how to reconstruct the plot and get the scientific information out.

 A key step was turning off the whitening filters. With the previous setting (G = 15 dB, white on), the error signals (post anti-whitening) had amplitudes of ~500 counts. This means that they can go as high as (150/15)^2 * 500 = 50000 counts on the ADC.

The purpose of the whitening filter is to match the noise / range of the signal to the ADC. What we would like to do is use the minimum gain so as to make the RFPD electronics noise + shot noise be ~equal to the ADC noise. i.e.

sqrt(V_PD^2 + v_shot^2) * G_white = V_ADC

The RFPD noise is ~3 nV before the internal preamp. The MAX4107 has a gain of 10. There is a factor of 1/2 from the voltage division of the RFPD's 50 Ohm series resistor and the input impedance of the mixer. There is also a power splitter between the PD output and the mixer which gives us a 3 dB loss. The mixer has a conversion loss of ~5-6 dB depending upon the LO level.

V_PD = 3e-9 * (10 * 1/2 * 1/sqrt(2) * 1/2) = 5e-9 V/rHz   (this is already bad; the signal coming out of the mixer needs to be amplified by x10 before going out to the whitening board).

In any case, its clear that we need something like 60 dB of gain for the PD noise to match the ADC noise. This is why increasing the whitening gain improves the error signal's SNR, reduces the hash driving the optics, and improves the locking. We should run with 45 dB gain and the switch on whitening after the lock.

Even better would be to modify the LT1128 input stage of the card to have the single stage of fixed whitening as we did for iLIGO. Then we can have triple whitening in lock.

 Our first move has to be fixing the whitening switching for REFL55. That's the configuration we need to start and then move onto REFL165 to get to FPPRMI.

  Very good - now you need to just put the cal factor into the filter banks so that the PERROR and YERROR signals are in microradians all the time.

EDIT JCD:  In progress.

 I changed the default shell on our control room iMac to bash. Since we're really, really using bash as the shell for LIGO, we might as well get used to it. As we do this for the workstations, some things will fail, but we can adopt Jamie's private .bashrc to get started and then fix it up later.

 After 1 month, its hard to imagine that this could not have been fixed by putting in a proper fuse and fuse block. I will remove this tomorrow if I still find it this way in the bottom of the rack.

There are also 2 Sorensen switching supplies in the bottom of the LSC rack (with all of our sensitive demod boards). These should also be moved over to the old 'digital' LSC rack tomorrow for the post meeting lab cleanup.

Use fuse blocks with fuses with appropriate ampacity.

 For the 110 MHz demod boards, we would ideally have a plugin bandpass filter. If you have some specs in mind, you can email mini-circuits or pulsar microwave about making a custom part; its not too expensive usually.

For the meantime, you should remove the onboard one and replace with a combination of low/high pass filters from Mini-Circuits. If you put a SLP-150 and a SHP-100 in series, the insertion loss should be less than 1 dB.

I think the ERA amps are OK for now, but they die with time, so they just need to be tested and replaced if necessary.

 There are some tips for how to appy nail polish on YouTube from MKNails and MissJenFABULOUS. Their tips on how to prepare the site for a strong bonding strength are probably helpful for our gold/nickel coated tools. For chrome tools we may need to abrade the surface with a stone or fine sandpaper for it to take the layer better. IF the YouTube videos don't do it for you, then I suggest contacting Tom Evans at LLO to find out what kind of nail polish he uses.

 1) We still need to drill and install the thumbscrew latches which secure the lids to the table. We cannot use the tables as an acoustic enclosure with loose lids.

2) For the camera issue, the idea is to put the longpass filters on the front of the cameras: then they are only sensitive to light with wavelength > 800 nm.

3) Whenever any interferometer work is happening the light switches must be in the positions which have been marked on them (and which most everyone ignores foolishly). We have never been insensitive to the room lights; the black table enclosures just give us a false sense of security. Room lights impact the interferometer noise.

The MC seemed to be losing lock recently quite a bit. I noticed that the PC Drive RMS signal was red.

This means that the high frequency drive to the Pockels cell was too high by a factor of 2-3 and sometimes saturating and breaking the lock.

I fiddled with the gains on the FSS screen until this value went down. It looks like there is some kind of high Q oscillation; it takes a couple minutes for the PC Drive RMS to settle to its new position after changing the gains.

The attached trend plot show the last 2 hours. The mean is now back to ~1 V and seems OK. We should really examine the FSS or MC error point spectra with the RF analyzer while exploring this gain space.

 Listening to the free swinging Y-arm, its clear that the fringe velocity is higher with the MCL path off, than on. I checked that the default gain of -300 was too high and changed it to -100 in the mcup script. With the higher gain value, there was clear gain peaking at just under 60 Hz (where the 60 Hz comb filter starts). We basically want the UGF to be between 20 and 60 Hz so that we can have the Bounce mode RG at 16.25 Hz and also the notch filter at 60 Hz.

Den is measuring and setting the UGF to be ~45 Hz.

With the MCL path on there is a high frequency horn-like noise in the Yarm when it locks. Its reduced a little by reducing the loop gain, but clearly this is just noise introduced by the MCL loop as Den noted before (and also tonight). He is cleaning up the whole MCL MEDM situation so that its useable by us. At the moment I've re-enabled it in the mcup.

My belief is that the frequency noise from the unstabilized MC is making the PRC locking harder. This will be investigated by tuning the shape of the MCL/MCF crossover so that we can turn it on without ruining the arm cavity spectra. Since the PRC length is ~2x smaller than the MC, we would expect it to be less sensitive to the MC frequency noise. But, since there is some common mode rejection in there, this may not be true. We'll only know by measuring PRC control signal with MCL on/off.

 How is the cavity g-factor accounted for in this calculation?

 Maybe its equivalent, but I would have assumed that the input beam is fixed and then calculate the cavity axis rotation and translation. If its small, then the modal expansion is OK. Otherwise, the overlap integral can be used.

For the ETM motion, its a purely translation effect, whereas its tilt for the ITM. For the PRM, it is also a mostly translation effect as calculated at the PRC waist position (ITM face).

 In order to get translation to RIN, we need to know the offset of the input beam from the cavity axis...

This should be possible to calibrate by putting a pitch and yaw excitation lines into the PRM and measuring the RIN.

See secret document from Koji.

 Why use the PSL beam as a reference? Don't we want to keep the MC pointing in a good direction through the Faraday instead???

controls@rosalba:/users/rana/docs 0$ svn resolve --accept working nancy
Resolved conflicted state of 'nancy'

Due to the recent addition of cal factors in the OL error points, the OLPIT_GAIN and OLYAW_GAIN have been reduce to tiny numbers (e.g. 0.002).

Since our MEDM only shows 3 digits past the decimal point by default, it makes more sense to have the gains around 1.

So I reduced the gains in all of the FM1 filters from 1000 to 1 and multiplied the GAIN values by 1000 (using ezcastep) to compensate.

All of the active optics seem to be behaving as before. Haven't tested ETMs or SRM yet.

 Koji and I went into "Update Manager" on several of the Ubuntu workstations and unselected the "check for updates" button. This is to prevent the machines from asking to be upgraded so frequently - I am concerned that someone might be tempted to upgrade the workstations to Ubuntu 12.

We didn't catch them all, so please take a moment to check that this is the case on all the laptops you are using and make it so. We can then apply the updates in a controlled manner once every few months.

controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master 0$ ls
C1IOO_LKIN_OUT_MTRX.adl   C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN5.adl     C1IOO_WFS1_I.adl             C1IOO_WFS_LKIN.adl
C1IOO_LOCKMC.adl          C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN6.adl     C1IOO_WFS1_Q.adl             C1IOO_WFS_MASTER.adl
C1IOO_LOCKMC_BAK.adl      C1IOO_MC_ASS_PIT_LOCKIN.adl  C1IOO_WFS1_SETTINGS.adl      C1IOO_WFS_MASTER.adl~
C1IOO_MC_ALIGN.adl        C1IOO_MC_ASS_YAW_LOCKIN.adl  C1IOO_WFS1_SETTINGS.adl.old  C1IOO_WFS_MASTER_BAK.adl
C1IOO_MC_ALIGN.adl~       C1IOO_MC_LOCKINS.adl         C1IOO_WFS2_I.adl             C1IOO_WFS_OUTMATRIX.adl
C1IOO_MC_ALIGN_BAK.adl    C1IOO_MC_SERVO.adl           C1IOO_WFS2_Q.adl             C1IOO_WFS_QPD.adl
C1IOO_MC_ASS.adl          C1IOO_MC_TRANS_QPD.adl       C1IOO_WFS2_SETTINGS.adl      C1IOO_WFS_QPD.adl.old
C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN1.adl  C1IOO_Mech_Shutters.adl      C1IOO_WFS2_SETTINGS.adl.old  fmX
C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN2.adl  C1IOO_MODECLEANER.adl        C1IOO_WFS_HEADS.adl          junk
C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN3.adl  C1IOO_QPDS.adl               C1IOO_WFS_HEADS.adl.old      master
C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN4.adl  C1IOO_QPDS_BAK.adl           C1IOO_WFS_INMATRIX.adl       svn-commit.tmp~
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
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controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master 0$ helppp
helppp: command not found
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master 127$ help me
bash: help: no help topics match `me'.  Try `help help' or `man -k me' or `info me'.

1. Fixed LOCKMC screen to display the SLOWM voltage instead of the ref cav transmission.
2. PSL Status .db file updated to trigger on correct limits for FSS FAST and the FSS and PMC local oscillator levels.
3. SETTINGS_SET screen can now take and display screen snapshots.

All of these changes were committed to the SVN.

 Pfft. Why 500 usec delay? We should be using the known parameters for the hardware and software AA/AI.

1. What are we using 16 DAC channels for in the LSC?
2. What are the functions of those IOO DAC channels which go to cross-connects? If they're not properly sending, then we may have malfunctioning MC or MCWFS.
3. Can we just use the SLOW DAC (4116) for the ALS PZTs? We used this for a long time for the input steering and it was OK (but not perfect).

I deleted a bunch of useless categories from the 40m elogd.cfg file. IF you find your category has been deleted, you can now learn how to categorize yourself into the existing categories. ELOG restarted and log file zeroed.

We talked about the thing that watches the scripts for autolocking during the meeting today.

I've resurrected the Perl-Tk GUI that we used through i/eLIGO for watching the IFO and running the appropriate scripts. This is not meant to be a replacement for aLIGO stuff, but just something to get us going for now. I expect that we will make some new fanciness which will eclipse this, but I brought it back so that we don't start off with some 'Advanced' system which is worse than the old one.

You can run it from scripts/c1/ by typing ./AutoRUN.pl. It pops up the GUI and starts in a Disabled mode where it watches and does nothing.

I have done some editing of the GUI's code so that it uses caget / caput instead of ezca binaries. New stuff is in the SVN.

Next up is to start testing it and fixing it up so that it uses the thresholds set in the LSC screens rather than some hardcoded values.

Eventually we should also convert all of its daughter scripts from tcsh to bash to keep Jamie's blood pressure in the low hundreds...

 TODO:

1. We need to replace all of the floppy anodized Al dumps with clean razor blade dumps on stiff mounts. BOTH of the rejected ports of the 1064 FI need some kind of custom dump.
2. All of the leakthrough beams of the HR mirrors also need razor dumps. A good rule of thumb is that your first notion of how to implement the beam dump is NOT good enough.
3. The whole lens / modematching situation for the 1064 and 532 paths will have to be redone so as to put the beam waists inside the Faraday crystal (NOT outside). The beam waist in the 4.7 mm diameter Faraday should be ~0.3-0.4 mm.
4. The efficiency that we got for the doubling shows that we don't need the cylindrical lenses - they are nice, but not needed to get 90% of the max power.
5. The lenses between the 1064 FI and the doubler should be put onto a base that can be used to adjust the lens position for MM optimization. Nothing fancy, just something slideable.
6. For this iteration of the table, we can do as Annalisa has written so as to get the green MM lenses ordered ASAP. After next week we can come up with a new plan before dismantling the EX table.

 After working some more on the EY table, we are getting some TEM00 flashes for the Y arm green. We have had to raise the height of one of the MM lenses to prevent clipping.

We used a function generator to apply a ~300 mV 10 Hz triangle wave to scan the laser frequency while aligning.

We tried to use the C1:ALS-TRY_OUT channel to help us in our alignment but there are a couple problems:

1) It seems that there is an uncompensated whitening filter before the ADC - Annalisa is making a compensation filter now.

2) The data delay is too much to use this for fast alignment. We might need to get a coax cable down there or mount a wired ethernet computer on the wall.

3) We need to make DQ channels for the TRY and TRX OUT. We need long term data of these, not just test points.

 We also redid the oplev path.

Someone had used the illegal tactic of using aluminum dogs to hold down mounts which already have screw holes in the bases. This is too flimsy to use.

We then adjusted the position of the second lens to get a ~1 mm spot on the QPD. There is a lot of stray red light from extra reflections, but so be it.

Its possible that we are now clipping the IPANG path, but we will need to lock the Y arm and verify the input pointing to be sure. At this point we are ready to measure the ETMY OL loop gain and tune, etc.

The FSS SLOW actuator often runs off away from zero and into a region where the mode hopping is bad and makes a lot of frequency noise (e.g. that 8 hour period a few weeks ago when Jamie couldn't lock the MC).

It should not have this behavior. The SLOW loop should only be running when the MC is locked.

Today I found that the threshold was set back to 0.2 V (which is approximately the correct value for the RefCav locking). Its being compared to the MC TRANS, so the correct value should be ~1/2 of the maximum MC TRANS.

To find this out, I read this piece of text:

    # Make sure the loop is supposed to be active
    if (get_value("C1:IOO-MC_TRANS_SUM") < get_value("C1:PSL-FSS_LOCKEDLEVEL")) {
    print("Reference Cavity not locked -- control loop disabled.\n");
    next;
    }

from scripts/PSL/FSS/FSSSlowServo. I set the threshold using the commmand:

caput -c -t C1:PSL-FSS_LOCKEDLEVEL 12000

Then I restarted the code on op340m, by typing:

> nohup FSSSlowServo

and then closing the terminal. Seems to be behaving correctly now. Previously, the value was so low that the SLOW loop was never turning itself off.

The rejected beam from this Faraday comes out at a tiny, tiny angle and so its tough to pick it off without clipping the main beam.

Some care must be taken in setting this up - Steve may have some good ideas on what kind of mount can be placed so close to the beam.

Why did we ever order this terrible Faraday? Let's never get a Faraday with a tiny angle between the beams again.

 Wrong: this is not an interface.

 This is nice - how about figuring out how to plot the measurement and model on the same plot? I guess we need to figure out how to go from counts to Watts.

Trying to figure out what's wrong with the MC WFS:

1) The symptom seems to be that the control signals become very large in the pitch and then the loop breaks when they saturate. Usually this is due to a degenerate matrix or improper inversion. Most likely some of the BURT restore is bad or the analog gain for one of the WFS has been switched when Jamie was doing the "Guardian" debugging.

2) In checking this out, I found that several buttons on the WFS  screens were not working (and apparently have never been working). Please try to test things in the future...The filter bank buttons in C1IOO_MC_TRANS_QPD were using relative path names; fixed these to use abs path names. The buttons in the WFS_MASTER for the IOO_PIT banks were using IOO_PITCH instead...

2.5) Recentered beams on WFS heads with MC alignment good and MC unlocked.

3) Main problem in the WFS still not found - disabling this in the autolocker.

Tried a bunch of stuff, but eventually just turned off the TRANS_QPD loops and loops are stable. Needs more debugging.

1. Modified the on/off scripts so that the Integrators are no longer toggled. No reason to turn them off since we are clearing the filter bank histories.
2. With QPD feedback OFF, I have lowered the overall gain by 15x so that its just drift control.
3. Deleted unused / bad filters from the main filter banks.
4. Gautam is going to debug the QPD with a red laser pointer and then elog.
5. Jamie is checking out the MC Coil dewhitening logic to see if that's in a funny state.

From the ALS overview screen, opening up the ETMX and ETMY screens gives these white fields. The PV info indicates that the blank fields were made with some macro variable substitution that didn't work well.

Why are these different from the SUS screens I get from the sitemap?

I've restarted the NDS2 process on Megatron so that we can use it for getting past data and eventually from outside the 40m.

1) from /home/controls/nds2 (which is not a good place for programs to run) I ran nds2-megatron/start-nds2

2) this is just a script that runs the binary from /usr/bin/ and then leaves a log file in ~/nds2/log/

3) I tested with DTT that I could access megatron:31200 and get data that way.

There is a script in usr/bin called nds2_nightly which seems to be the thing we should run by cron to get the channel list to get updated, but I' m not sure. Let's see if we can get an ELOG entry about how this works.

Then we want Jamie to allow some kind of tunneling so that the 40m data can be accessed from outside, etc.

For quite a while (no one knows how long), we've seen fluctuations in the 10-30 Hz seismic motion. This shows up as the purple trace on the seismic BLRMS on the wall projector.

The second plot shows that this is not only a periodic increase in the usual 29.5 Hz HVAC peak, but also an anomolous 32.2 Hz peak. Probably some malfunctioning machinery - maybe in the 40m or maybe on the roof.

 Could be that this is OK, but it doesn't yet make sense to me. Can you please explain in words how this manages to apply the calibration rather than just add an extra gain to the phase tracking loop?

 I'm still seeing some problems with this - some laptops are losing and not recovering any connection. What's to be done next? New router?

Its an increase in the microseismic peak. Don't know what its due to though.