Sus dampings recovered. ETMY oplev needs to be recentered.

GV May 17 11am: I shut down the BS, SRM, ITMX and ITMY watchdogs, as the coil-driver boards for these optics are presently not installed.
 

Ruby wire standoff received from China. I looked one of them with our small USB camera.  They did a good job. The  long edges of the prism are chipped.

The v-groove cutter must avoid them. Pictures will follow.

Atm 1 & 5, showing the ruby R ~10 mm as it is seated on Al SOS test mass

Atm. 2, 3 & 4  chipped long edges with SOS sus wire OD 43 micron as  calibration

Bluebean Optical Tech Limited of Shanghai delivered 50 pieces red ruby prisms with radius.  The first prism pictures were taken at June 5

and it was retaken again as BB#1 later

More samples were selected randomly as one from each bag of 5 and labeled as BB#2.......6    

 The R10 mm radius can be seen agains the  ruler edge.  The v-groove edge was labeled with blue marker and pictures were taken

from both side of this ridge. The top view is shown as the wire laying across on it.

SOS sus wire of 43 micron OD used as calibration as it was placed close to the side that it was focused on.

The V-groove ridge surface quality was evaluated based on as scale of 1 – 10 with 10 being the most positive.

Remaining thing to examin, take picture of the contacting ridge to SOS from the side.

1103P, sn P893518 of  2013 vintage is dead at the sus  fiber demo

     July  19,  2017             1103P, sn P964438 as new installed at the south end for the glass fiber illumination. Turn laser off when you are done.

The $1000 HeNe should not be used for illuminating fibers.

You should purchase these (total price per laser less than $6):

1. 10 red laser diodes for $2.39 total
2. 3-5 Vdc adapters

Also ordered 1 ea.

Blue 20mW

Green 10mW

IR 780nm 3mW

HeNe 1103P 2mW Recertified

Summary:

Yesterday at the meeting, we talked about how the analog de-whitening filters in the coil driver path may be more aggressive than necessary. I think Attachment #1 shows that this is indeed the case.

Details:

I had done some modeling and measurement of some of these noises while I was putting together the initial DRMI noise budget, but I had never put things together in one plot. In Attachment #1, I've plotted the following:

1. Quadrature sum of seismic noise (from GWINC calculations) for 3 suspended optics (I'm sticking to the case of 3 optics since I've been doing all the noise-budgeting for MICH - for DARM, it will be 4 suspended optics).
2. The unfiltered DAC noise estimate. The voltage noise was measured in this elog. To convert this to displacement noise for 3 suspended optics, I've used the value of 1.55e-9/f^2 m/ct as the actuator coefficient. This number should be accurate under the assumption that the series resistance on the coil driver board output is 400 ohms (we could increase this - by how much depends on how much actuation range is needed).  
3. Coil driver board and de-whitening board electronics noises (added in quadrature). I've used the LISO model noises, which line up well with the measured noises in elogs 13010 and 13015.
4. The DAC noise filtered by the de-whitening transfer function, separately for the cases of using one or both of the available biquad stages. This cannot be lower than the preceeding trace (electronics noise of de-whitening and coil driver boards), so should be disregarded where it dips below it. 

It would seem that the coil driver + de-whitening board electronic noises dominate above ~150Hz. The electronics noise is ~10nV/rtHz at the output of the coil driver board, which is only a factor of 100 below the DAC noise - so the stopband attenuation of ~70dB on the de-whitening boards seems excessive.

We can lower this noise by a factor of 2.5 if we up the series resistance on the coil driver boards from 400ohm to 1kohm, but even so, the displacement noise is ~1e-18 m/rtHz. I need to investigate the electronics noises a little more carefully - I only measured it for the case when both biquad stages were engaged, I will need to do the model for all permutations - to be updated. 

Attachment #2 has an iPython notebook used to generate this plot along with all the data.

Edit 28 Jul 2.30pm: I've added Attachment #3 with traces for different assumed values of the series resistance on the coil driver board - although I have not re-computed the Johnson noise contribution for the various resistances. If we can afford to reduce the actuation range by a factor of 25, then it looks like we get to within a factor of ~5 of the seismic noise at ~150Hz. 

See Attachment #1, which is full (2048Hz) data for a 3 minute stretch around when I saw the MC1 glitch. At the time of the glitch, WFS loops were disabled, so the only actuation on MC1 was via the local damping loops. The oscillations in the MC2 channels are the autolocker turning on the MC2 length tickle.

Nikhil and I tried the usual techniques of squishing cables at the satellite box, and also at 1X4/1X5, but the glitching persists. I will try and localize the problem this weekend. This thread details investigations the last time something like this happened. In the past, I was able to fix this kind of glitching by replacing the (high speed) current buffer IC LM6321M. These are present in a two places: Satellite box (for the shadow sensor LED current drive), and on the coil driver boards. I think we can rule out the slow machine ADCs that supply the static PIT and YAW bias voltages to the optic, as that path is low-passed with a 4th order filter @1Hz, while the glitches that show up in the OSEM sensor channels do not appear to be low-passed, as seen in the zoomed in view of the glitch in Attachment #2 (but there is an LM6321 in this path as well).

Somewhere between CDS model restarts and the IFO venting, ITMX got stuck.

I shook it loose using the usual bias slider technique. It appears to be free now, I was able to lock the green beam on a TEM00 mode without touching the green input pointing. The ITMX Oplev spot has also returned to within its MEDM display bounds.

Happened again just now, although the characteristics of the glitch are very different from the previous post, its less abrupt. Only actuation on MC1 at this point was local damping.

There must be some bad connection

I have squished cables in all the places I can think of - but MC1 has been glitching regularly today. Before starting to pull electronics out, I am going to attempt a more systematic debugging in the hope I can localize the cause.

To this end, I've disabled the MC autolocker, and have shutdown the MC1 watchdog. I plan to leave it in this state overnight. From this, I hope to look at the free-swinging optic spectra to see that this isn't a symptom of something funky with the suspension itself.

Some possible scenarios (assuming the free swinging spectra look alright and the various resonances are where we expect them to be):

1. With the watchdog shutdown, the PIT/YAW bias voltages still goto the coil (low-passed by 4 poles @1Hz). So if the glitching happens in this path, we should see it in both the shadow sensors and the DC spot positions on the WFS.
2. If the glitching happens in the shadow sensor readout electronics/cabling, we should see it in the shadow sensor channels, but NOT in the DC spot positions on the WFS (as the watchdog is shutdown, so there should be no actuation to the coils based on OSEM signals).
3. If we don't see any glitches in WFS spot positions or shadow sensors, then it is indicative of the problem being in the coil driver board / dewhitening board/anti-aliasing board.
4. I am discounting the problem being in the Satellite box, as we have switched around the MC1 satellite box multiple times - the glitches remain on MC1 and don't follow a Satellite Box. Of course there is the possibility that the cabling from 1X5/1X6 to the Satellite box is bad.

MC1 has been in a glitchy mood today, with large (MC-REFL spot shifts by ~1 beam diameter on the CCD monitor) glitches happening ~every 2-3 hours. Hopefully it hasn't gone into an extended quiet period. For reference, I've attached the screen-grab of the MC-QUAD and MC-REFL as they are now.

GV 9.20PM: Just to make sure of good SNR in measuring the pendulum eigenfreqs, I ran /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/SUS/freeswing MC1 in a terminal . The result looked rather violent on the camera but its already settling down. The terminal output:

Attachment #1: Free swinging sensor spectra. I havent done any peak fitting but the locations of the resonances seem consistent with where we expect them to be.

The MC_REFL spot appears to not have shifted significantly (so slow bias voltages are probably not to blame). Now I have to look at trend data to see if there is any evidence of glitching.

I'm not sure I understand the input matrix though - the matrix elements would have me believe that the sensing of POS in UL is ~5x stronger than in UR and LL, but the peak heights don't back that up.

Attachment #3: Second trend over 5hours (since frame writing was re-enabled this morning). Note that MC1 is still free-swinging but there is no evidence of steps of ~30cts which have been observed some days ago. Also, from my observations yesterday, MC1 glitched multiple times over a few hours timescale. More data will have to be looked at, but as things stand, Hypothesis #3 below looks the best.

About 30mins ago, I saw another glitch on MC1 - this happened while the Watchdog was shutdown.

In order to further narrow down the cause of the glitch, we switched the Coil Driver Board --> Satellite box DB(15?) connectors on the coil drivers between MC1 and MC3 coil driver boards. I also changed the static PIT/YAW bias voltages to MC1 and MC3 such that MC-REFL is now approximately back to the center of the CCD monitor.

Even in the switched state, the glitches stayed on MC1.

The coil driver electronics for MC1, upstream of the Satellite box, was what was previously MC3 electronics.

Attachment #1 shows that there were no glitches in MC3 sensor channels (which are now physically connected to what was previously MC1 coil driver electronics).

Attachment #2 shows the second trends for a 12 hour period for MC1 and MC3 sensor channels. The MC3 channels look well behaved, but there are frequent glitches (at least 9 in the last 12 hours ) visible in the MC1 channels.

So to recap:

• We switched MC1 satellite box - but glitch stayed on MC1, so it would seem the Satellite box is not to blame.
• We shutdown the watchdog and the glitches persisted.
• We switched the coil driver electronics for MC1, but glitches remained on MC1, and MC3 doesn't show any evidence of glitching. This and the previous bullet point suggest the coil driver electronics are not to blame.
• For the glitch posted in Attachment #1, I could see the MC-REFL spot moving around on the CCD monitors, so the glitches aren't just a feature in the shadow sensor readout. 

I need to confirm that the output of the coil driver board goes straight to the Sat. Box, but if there are no intermediate elements, the problem is either in the cable from coil driver to sat. box, or downstream of the Satellite box - i.e. vacuum feedthroughs or the suspension itself? The size of the glitches is roughly the same in all 4 face channels (~60-80cts pp).

GV addendum 14 Aug 2017, 10.30am: Attachment #3 shows the second trend for the MC sensor channels over the weekend. While there were many on Saturday, it seems that Sunday was quieter.

To add to Gautam's entry: we swapped the cables at the coil driver side (these are the ones that go from coil driver to sat box). In this state, damping is not useable since the MC1 servos would drive MC3.

~70 counts in the sensor means ~70 microns of motion. Since the watchdogs are off and the coil drivers are swapped, this can't be laser beam getting in to the sensors.

WE have to consider that these are some real strain release type events happening in the suspension wire or wire standoff, so may require a vent to inspect and possible repair MC1.

We used to have similar suspension excursion at ETMX. This was the motivation to replace the stand-offs from Al ones to ruby ones. Did the replacement solve the issue at ETMX?

I don't think we can say for sure. I was just talking to EricQ about this, he said the glitches were often seen when changing the alignment offsets when aligning the arm. I am pretty sure I have seen the ETMX alignment change abruptly since the Ruby Standoff replacement (the Oplev spot just slides across the MEDM display rapidly), but I can't find an elog where I've put in details. I also haven't done a whole lot of work with the arm cavities where I would have noticed this problem. There is this test that Eric did, and it didn't throw up any red flags. But the suspension can be well behaved for weeks at a time before this problem pops up again.

There was also the flaky power connection to the timing card on the ETMX expansion chassis which was fixed only recently, after which there has been no systematic investigation of the status of ETMX.

If it is true that these events are caused by strain building up in the suspension wire, I wonder how we can take systematic steps to avoid it. From what I remember of the SOS assembly procedure, the (unglued) standoff is slid along the optic with the wire under slight tension until the wire slips into the groove on the standoff. Then the tension in the wire is adjusted till the optic is pitch balanced and at the desired height. But it is easy to imagine imprinting some torsional stresses in the (40 um?) wire during this process of looping it around under the optic and placing it in the groove. But perhaps this mechanism makes a negligible contribution to the effect we are seeing, and some other mechanism is responsible in this case.

Now that all the CDS overview lights are green, I decided to switch back the coil driver outputs to their original state so that the MC optics could be damped and the IMC relocked. I also restored the static PIT/YAW bias values to their original values.

MC1 has been quiet over the last couple of days, lets see how it behaves in the next few days. In all the glitches I have observed, if the IMC is locked and WFS loops are enabled, the loops are able to correct for the DC misalignment caused by the glitch. But the mcwfs off script is currently set up in such a way that the output history is cleared between IMC locks. I made two copies of the mcwfson/mcwfsoff scripts, called mcwfsunhold/mcwfshold respectively. They live in /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/MC/WFS. I've also modified the autolocker script to call these modified scripts, such that when the IMC loses lock, the WFS servo outputs are held, while the input is turned off. The hope is that in this configuration, the autolocker can catch a lock even if there is a glitch on MC1.

I haven't tried locking the arms yet, but I think other IFO work discussed at the meeting (like arm loss estimation / cavity scans etc) can proceed.

Seems like this modification didn't really work. There were several large MC1 glitches, and one of them misaligned MC1 so much that the IMC didn't relock for the last ~6 hours. I re-aligned MC1 manually, and now it is locked fine.

that's why the Autolocker clears the outputs; we don't want to be holding the offsets from the last ms of lock when it was all messed up; instead it would be best to have a slow (~mHz) relief script that takes the WFS controls and puts them onto the MC SUS sliders. This would then re-align the MC to the input beam rather than the input to the MC. Which is not the best idea.

They are synchronised tiny glitches. They are not mechanical.
 

[ericq, gautam]

Tonight, we decided to double-check the POX counts-to-meters conversion.

It is unclear when this was last done, and since I modified the coil driver electronics for the ITMs and BS recently, I figured it would be useful to get this calibration done. The primary motivation was to see if we could resolve the discrepancy between the current ALS noise (using POX as a sensor) compared to the Izumi et. al. plot.

Because we are planning to change the coil driver electronics further soon anyways, we decided to do the calibration at a single frequency for tonight. For future reference, the extension of this method to calibrate the actuator over a wider range of frequencies is here. The procedure followed, and the relevant numbers from tonight, are as follows.

Procedure:

1. Set dark offsets on all DCPDs and LSC PDs.
2. Look at the free swinging Michelson signal on ASDC.
   • For tonights test, ASDC was derived from the AS55 photodiode.
   • The AS110 photodiode actually has more light on it, but we think that the ADC that the DCPD board is interfaced to is running on 0-2V rather than 0-10V, as the signal seemed to saturate around 2000 counts. It is unclear whether the actual photodiode is saturating, to be investigated.
   • So we decided to use ASDC from AS55 photodiode with 15dB whitening gain.
   • There is also some issue with the whitening filter (not whitening gain) on ASDC - engaging the whitening shifts the DC offset. This has to be investigated while we get stuck into the LSC electronics.
3. Look at the peak-to-peak swing of ASDC. Use algebraic expression for reflected power from Michelson interferometer to calibrate the ASDC slope at Michelson half-fringe. For the test tonight, ASDC_max = 1026 counts, ASDC_min = 2 counts.
4. Lock the Michelson at half-fringe, with ASDC as the error signal.
   • Zero out the MICH elements in the RFPD input matrix.
   • Set the matrix element from ASDC to MICH in the DCPD LSC input matrix to 1.
   • The servo gain used was +0.005 on the MICH_A servo path.
   • A low-frequency boost was turned on.
5. Use the sensing matrix infrastructure to drive a line in the optic of interest.
   • Tonight, we looked at ITMX and ITMY.
   • The line was driven at 311.1Hz, and the amplitude was 300 counts.
   • Download 60secs of ASDC data, demodulate at the driven frequency to find the peak height in counts, and using the slope of ASDC (in cts/m) at the Michelson half-fringe, calculate the actuator gain in m/cts.
   • ITMY: 2.55e-9 / f^2 m/count
   • ITMX: 2.65e-9 / f^2 m/count
   • These numbers kind of make sense - the previous numbers were ~5nm/f^2 /ct, but I removed an analog gain of x3 in this path. Presumably there has been some change in the N/A conversion factor - perhaps because of a change in the interaction between the optics' face magnets and the static magnetic field in the OSEMs?
6. Lock the arms with POX/POY, and drive the newly calibrated ITMs.
   • So we know how many meters we are driving the ITMs by.
   • Looking at POX/POY, we can calibrate these into meters/count.
   • Both POX and POY were whitened.
   • POX whitening gain = +30dB, POY whitening gain = +18dB.
   • ITMX and ITMY were driven at 311.1Hz, with amplitude = 2counts.
   • Download 60 secs of data, demodulate at the drive frequency to find the peak height, and use the known ITM actuator gains to calibrate POX and POY.
   • POX: 7.34e-13 m / count (approx. 5 times less than the number in the Foton filter bank in the C1:CAL-CINV model).
   • POY: 1.325e-13 m / count
   • We did not optimize the demod phases for POX/POY tonight. 

Once these calibrations were updated, we decided to control the arms with ALS, and look at the POX spectrum. Y-arm ALS wasn't so stellar tonight, especially at low frequencies. I can see the GTRY spot moving on the CCD monitor, so something is wonky. To be investigated. But the X arm ALS noise looked pretty good.

Seems like updating the calibration did the job; see the attached comparison plot.

Last night, while we were working on the ALS, I noticed the GTRY spot moving around (in PITCH) on the CCD monitor in the control room at ~1-2Hz. The operating condition was that the arm was locked to the IR, and the PSL green shutter was closed, so that only the arm transmissions were visible on the CCD screens. There was no such noticable movement of the GTRX spot. When looking at the out-of-loop ALS nosie in this configuration (but now with the PSL green shutter open of course), the Y arm ALS noise at low frequencies was much worse than the X arm.

Today, I looked into this a little more. I first checked that the Y-endtable enclosure was closed off as usual (as I had done some tweaking to the green input pointing some days ago). There are various green ghost beams on the Y-endtable. When time permits, we should make an effort to cleanly dump these. But the enclosure was closed as usual.

Then I looked at the in-loop Oplev error signal spectra for the ITMY and ETMY Oplev loops. There was high coherence between ETMYP Oplev error signal and GTRY. So I took a loop transfer function measurement - the upper UGF was around 3.5Hz. I increased the loop gain such that the upper UGF was around 4.5Hz, with phase margin ~30degrees. Doing so visibly reduced the angular movement of the GTRY spot on the CCD. Attachment #1 shows the Oplev loop TF after the gain increase, while Attachment #2 compares the GTRX and GTRY spectra (DC value is approximately the same for both, around 0.4). GTRY still seems a bit noisier at low frequencies, but the out-of-loop ALS noise for the Y arm now lines up much more closely with its reference trace from a known good time. 

MC1, MC2 and MC3 damping turned off to see glitching action at 9:57am

I re-enabled the MC SUS damping and IMC locking for some IFO work just now.

Summary:

The signal path for the ASDC signal is AS55 PD --> D990543 (interface board) --> D990694 (whitening board) --> D000076 (AA board) --> ADC Ch 31. Everything in this signal chain should be able to handle signals in the range +/- 10V, which should correspond to the full range of our +/-10V, 16bit ADCs. But the ASDC signal seems to saturate at ~2000 counts (i.e. turning up the analog whitening gain doesn't make the signal get any bigger than this). I investigated this a little more today.

Details:

• The ASDC signal is derived from the AS55 photodiode. According to the schematic, the Op27 that supplies this voltage is powered by +/- 15V, so the output should be able to swing between at least +/- 12V.
• The DC signal goes from the DB15 connector on the side of the PD to the LSC electronics rack, 1Y2, where it is interfaced with an LSC PD Interface Card, D990543. Again, per the schematic, the Op27 driving this voltage is powered by +/- 15V, and so the available output voltage swing should be greater than +/-12V.
• The D990543 output is to its backplane connector. There is an adaptor board hooked up to the backplane that makes these outputs available to a LEMO connector. A LEMO-SMA cable then pipes this output to a D990694.
  • I decided to test the functionality of this board.
  • Disconnected the SMA ASDC input signal (CH8 on the board).
  • Drove that channel with an SR function generator and gradually turned up the Vpp of the input signal (sine wave at 145Hz).
  • Monitored the ASDC channel on dataviewer while doing this.
  • Saw that the ASDC signal saturated at ~2000 counts. Turning up the signal amplitude did not have any effect.
• From the whitening board, the signal goes through an anti-aliasing module (D000076). The final stage LT1125s on these boards should also be supplied with +/-15V.

So the problem lies somewhere downstream of the D990694. There are other anomalous behaviours of this channel - e.g. engaging the analog whitening filters changes the DC offset of the signal. I am going to pull out this board to check it out.

Why does this matter? I want to calibrate the ASDC level (and eventually the other PD DC signals as well) into Watts. This is useful for IFO diagnostics, noise budgeting the shot noise level etc.

According to the AS55 schematic, the DC transimpedance is 66.7 ohms. I claim that the DC power on the AS55 photodiode during a DRMI (no arms) lock is ~1mW. The C30642 photodiode (InGaAs) responsivity is ~0.8 A/W. So I'd expect ~50mV to be the signal level into the ADC (assuming gain of all the other electronics in the signal chain at the start of this elog is unity). This corresponds to ~163 counts (since the ADC conversion factor is 2^16 counts over 20volts). The DC signal level I observed is ~200 counts. So things seem roughly consistent.

*Note: Despite my above statement, I don't think it is true that the AS110 PD has more light on it - the BS splitting the light between

AS55 and AS110 PDs is a 50-50 BS, and using the crude method of putting an Ophir power meter in front of both PDs and

monitoring the power while the Michelson was swinging around freely showed roughly the same maximum value.

We've been talking about increasing the series resistance for the coil driver path for the test masses. One consequence of this will be that we have reduced actuation range.

This may not be a big deal since for almost all of the LSC loops, we currently operate with a limiter on the output of the control filter bank. The value of the limit varies, but to get an idea of what sort of "threshold" velocities we are looking at, I calculated this for our Finesse 400 arm cavities. The calculation is rather simplistic (see Attachment #1), but I think we can still draw some useful conclusions from it:

• In Attachment #1, I've indicated with dashed vertical lines some series resistances that are either currently in use, or are values we are considering.
• The table below tabulates the fraction of passages through a resonance we will be able to catch, assuming velocities sampled from a Gaussian with width ~3um/s, which a recent ALS study suggests describes our SOS optic velocity distribution pretty well (with lcoal damping on).
• I've assumed that the maximum DAC output voltage available for length control is 8V.
• Presumably, this Gaussian velocity distribution will be modified because of the LSC actuation exerting impulses on the optic on failed attempts to catch lock. I don't have a good model right now for how this modification will look like, but I have some ideas.
• It would be interesting to compare the computed success rates below with what is actually observed.
• The implications of different series resistances on DAC noise are computed here (although the non-linear nature of the DAC noise has not been taken into account).

So, from this rough calculation, it seems like we would lose ~25% efficiency in locking the arm cavity if we up the series resistance from 400ohm to 1kohm. Doesn't seem like a big deal, becuase currently, the single arm locking

Summary:

• SOS solidworks model is nearly complete
  • Having trouble with the design of the sensor/actuator head assembly and the lower clamps
• After Gautam's suggestion, installed Abaqus on computer. Teaching it to myself to eventually do FEM analysis and find resonant frequency of the system
  • Goal is to replicate frequency listed in the SOS documents to confirm accuracy of computer model, then replace guide rods with sapphire prisms and change geometry to get same results

Questions:

• How accurate do the details (like fillet, chamfer, placement of little vent holes), and material of the different SOS parts need to be in the model?
• If I could get pictures of the lower mirror clamp (document D960008), it would be helpful in making solidworks model. Document is unclear. Same for sensor/actuator head assembly. 

If you go through this thread of elogs, there are lots of pictures of the SOS assembly with the optic in it from the vent last year. I think there are many different perspectives, close ups of the standoffs, and of the OSEMs in their holders in that thread.

This elog has a measurement of the pendulum resonance frequencies with ruby standoffs - although the ruby standoff used was cylindrical, and the newer generation will be in the shape of a prism. There is also a link in there to a document that tells you how to calculate the suspension resonance frequencies using analytic equations.

I've been observing this for a few days: ETMX's DC alignment seems to drift by so much that the previously well aligned X arm cavity is now totally misaligned.

The wall StripTool trace shows that both the X and Y arms were locked with arm transmissions around 1 till c1psl conked out - so in the attached plot, around 1400 UTC, the arm cavity was well aligned. So the sudden jump in the OSEM sensor signals is the time at which LSC control to the ETM was triggered OFF. But as seen in the attached plot, after the lockloss, the Oplev signals seem to show that the mirror alignment drifted by >50urad. This level of drift isn't consistent with the OSEM sensor signals - of course, the Oplev calibration could be off, but the tension in values is almost an order of magnitude. The misalignment seems real - the other Oplev spots have stuck around near the (0,0) points where I recentered them last night, only ETMX seems to have undergone misalignment.

Need to think about what's happening here. Note that this kind of "drift" behaviour seems to be distinct from the infamous ETMX "glitching" problem that was supposed to have been fixed in the 2016 vent.

I should've put in the SUSPIT and SUSYAW channels in the previous screenshot. I re-aligned ETMX till I could see IR flashes in the arm, and also was able to lock the green beam on a TEM00 mode with reasonable transmission. As I suspected, this brought the Oplev spot back near the center of it's QPD. But the answer to the question "How much did I move the ETM by" still varies by ~1 order of magnitude, depending on if you believe the OSEM SUSPIT and SUSYAW signals, or the Oplev error signals - I don't know which, if any, of these, are calibrated.

Best to just calibrate the ETM OL in the usual way. I bet the OSEM outputs have a cal uncertainty of ~50% since the input matrix changes as a function of the DC alignment. Still, a 30 urad pitch mis-alignment gives a (30e-6 rad)(40 m) ~ 1 mm beam spot shift. This would be enough to flash other modes, but it would still be easy to lock on a TEM00 like this. I also doubt that the OL calibration is valid outside of some region near zero - can easily check by moving the ETM bias sliders.

What we still don't know is if this is due to Johannes/Aaron working at the ETMX rack (bumping some of the flaky coil cables and/or bumping the blue beams which support the stack). Adding or substracting weight from the stack supports will give us an ETM mis alignment.

I've often gotten confused by the labeling on the SUS MEDM screens about the coil "Vmon" fields - they're labelled as "30 Hz HPF", and indeed this is one of the many readbacks available on the coil driver board. But the actual EPICS channel that is being displayed in this field is from the "EPICS VMON" monitor point on the coil driver board. It has a gain of 1/2, so the actual voltage going to the coil is twice the channel value. Today, I fixed the SUS master screen to avoid this confusion - new labeling is shown in Attachment #1.

The ETMX  Sorrenson power supply -15V was running at -13.9V

Seems like there was a 5.3 magnitude EQ ~10km from us (though I didn't feel it). All watchdogs were tripped so our mirrors definitely felt it. ITMX is stuck (but all the other optics are damping fine). I tried the usual jiggling of DC bias voltage but ITMX still seems stuck. Probably a good sign that the magnet hasn't come off, but not ideal that I can't shake it free..

edit: after a bit more vigorous shaking, ITMX was freed. I had to move the bias slider by +/-10,000 cts, whereas initially I was trying +/-2000 cts. There is a tendency for the optic to get stuck again once it has been freed (while the optic's free swinging motion damps out), so I had to keep an eye out and as soon as the optic was freed, I re-engaged the damping servos to damp out the optic motion quickly.

Satellite amplifiers labeled with date. Old labels left on.

[SV,KA,RXA,GV]

The stack weight measurement is going on at EX. ETMX watchdog is shutdown. Area is off limits over the weekend until the test is finished.

Not related to this work, but the dog clamps used on the EX table have to be re-positioned such that the clamping force is better distributed. The 2" beam splitter mount used to pick off a portion of the EX NPRO beam to the fiber has to be rotated. Also, there was a M6.9 EQ in Hawaii while we were doing this work it seems..

[steve,gautam]

We tried to estimate what the load cell measurement should yield. Here is the weight breakdown (fudge factor for Al table is to try and account for tapped holes):

• Steve pointed out that there is some material removed from the stack legs for stability (hollows into which the viton springs fit). These countersinks have dimensions of diameter=2", height=1.75". So if we assume each leg has 10% less mass, the total weight becomes ~4600lbs.
• I think we will need to use one more load cell (i.e. total 4) for this measurement (we have more load cells, just need to setup one more controller).
• Steve is looking into acquiring some low profile jacks to deal with the fact that we only have limited travel range on the overall stack height because of the bellows.
• A useful document, from which we pulled some numbers (which also look reasonable using estimated dimensions and density calculations): P952005

I'm working near 1X5 and there is an SR785 adjacent to the electronics rack with some cabling running along the floor. I plan to continue in the evening so please leave the setup as is.

During the course of this work, I noticed the +15V Sorensen in 1X6 has 6.8 A of current draw, while Steve's February2018 label says the current draw is 8.6A. Is this just a typo?

Steve: It was most likely my mistake. Tag is corrected to 6.8A

I'm still in the process of electronics characterization, so the SR785 is still hooked up. MC3 coil driver signal is broken out to measure the output voltage going to the coil (via Gainx100 SR560 Preamp), but MC is locked.

The ITMX oplev still clipping

To obtain a colored version with good contrast of the grayscale image of scattering of light by dust particles on the surface of test mass, got using GigE camera. The original and colored images are attached here.

Seems like as a result of my recent poking around at 1X6, MC3 is more glitchy than usual (I've noticed that the IMC lock duty cycle seems degraded since Tuesday). I'll try the usual cable squishing voodo.

gautam 8.15pm: Glitches persisted despite my usual cable squishing. I've left PSL shutter closed and MC watchdog shutdown to see if the glitches persist. I'll restore the MC a little later in the eve.

Per discussion today eve, barring objections, I will do the following tomorrow morning:

1. Remove ETMX coil driver board from 1X9
   • Change series resistances on the fast path to 2x4k in parallel. One will be snipped off once we are happy we can still lock.
   • Remove AD797s, potentiometers.
   • Thick film-->thin film for important components.
2. Remove ETMX de-whitening board from 1X9
   • Remove x3 analog gain.
   • Thick film-->thin film for important components.

I finished the re-soldering work today, and have measured the coil driver noise pre-Mods and post-Mods. Analysis tomorrow. I am holding off on re-installing the board tonight as it is likely we will have to tune all the loops to make them work with the reduced range. So ETMX will remain de-commissioned until tomorrow.

I decided to take a quick look at the data. Changes made to the ETMX coil driver board:

1. Fast path series resistances: 400 ohm ---> 2.25 kOhm (= 2x 4.5 kohm in parallel). Measured (with DMM) resistance in all 5 paths varied by less than 3 ohms (~0.2%).
2. All thick film resistors in signal (fast and bias) paths changed to thin film.
3. AD797 ---> Op27 for monitor output.
4. Above-mentioned mon output (30Hz HPF-ed) routed to FP LEMO mon via 100ohm for diagnostic purposes.
5. 4x Trim-pots in analog path removed. 

I also took the chance to check the integrity of the LM6321 ICs. In the past, a large DC offset on the output pin of these has been indicative of a faulty IC. But I checked all the ICs with a DMM, and saw no anomalies.

Measurement condition was that (i) the Fast input was terminated to ground via 50ohm, (ii) the Bias input was shorted to ground. SR785 was used with G=100 Busby preamp (in which Steve installed new batteries today, for someone had left it on for who knows how long) for making the measurement. The voltage measurement was made at the D-Sub connector on the front panel which would be connected to the Sat. Box, with the coil driver not connected to anything downstream.

Summary of results:

[Attachment #1] - Noise measurement out to 800 Hz. The noise only seems to agree with the LISO model above 300 Hz. Not sure if the low-frequency excess is real or a measurement artefact. Tomorrow, I plan to make an LPF pomona box to filter out the HF pickup and see if the low-frequency characteristics change at all. Need to think about what this corner freq. needs to be. In any case, such a device is probably required to do measurements inside the VEA.

[Attachment #2] - Noise measurement for full SR785 span. The 19.5 kHz harmonics are visible. I have a theory about the origin of these, need to do a couple of more tests to confirm and will make a separate log.

[Attachment #3] - zip of LISO file used for modeling coil driver. I don't have the ASCII art in this, so need to double check to make sure I haven't connected some wrong nodes, but I think it's correct.

Measurements seem to be consistent with LISO model predictions.

*Note: Curves labelled "LISO model ..." are really quad sum of liso pred + busby box noise.

My main finding tonight is: With the increased series resistance (400 ohm ---> 2.25 kohm), LISO modeling tells me that even though the series resistance (Johnson noise) used to dominate the voltage noise at the output to the OSEM, the voltage noise of the LT1125 in the bias path now dominates. Since we are planning to re-design the entire bias path anyways, I am not too worried about this for the moment.

I will upload more details + photos + data + schematic + LISO model breakdown tomorrow to a DCC page. 

gautam noon 21 June 2018: I was looking at the wrong LISO breakdown curves. So the input stage Op27 voltage noise used to dominate. Now the Bias path LT1125 voltage noise dominates. None of the conclusions are affected... I've uploaded the corrected plots and LISO file here now. 

Initial tests look promising. Local damping works and I even locked the X arm using POX, although I did it in a fake way by simply inserting a x5.625 (=2.25 kohm / 400 ohm) gain in the coil driver filter banks. I will now tune the individual loop gains to account for the reduced actuation range.

Now I have changed the loop gains for local damping loops, Oplev loops, and POX locking loop to account for the reduced actuation range. The dither alignment servo (X arm ASS) has not been re-commissioned yet...

We may lost the UL magnet or LED