This elog is meant to review some of the important changes made during the vent this summer - please add to this if I've forgotten something important. I will be adding this to the wiki page for a more permanent record shortly.

Vent objectives:

1. Clean ITMX, ITMY, ETMX, ETMY
2. Replace ETMX suspension cage, replace Al wire standoffs with Ruby (sapphire?) standoffs.
3. Shorten Y arm length by 20mm
4. Replace 40mm aperture baffles in ETM chambers with 50mm black glass baffles

Optics, OSEM and suspension status:

ITMX & ITMY

• ITMX and ITMY did not have any magnets broken off during the vent - all five OSEM coils for both were removed and the optic EQ stopped for F.C. cleaning.
• Both HR and AR faces were F.Ced, ~20mm dia area cleaned.
• The coils were re-inserted in an orientation as close to the original (as judged from photos), and the shadow sensor outputs were made as close to half their open values as possible, although in the process of aligning the arms, this may have changed
• OSEM filter existense was checked (to be updated)
• Shadow sensor open values were recorded (to be updated)
• Checked that tables were level before closing up
• The UL OSEM on ITMY was swapped for a short OSEM while investigating glitchy shadow sensor outputs. This made no difference. However, the original OSEM wasn't replaced. Short OSEM was used as we only had spare short OSEMs. Serial number (S/N 228) and open voltage value have been recorded, wiki page will be updated. Does this have something to do with the input matrix diagonalization weirdness we have been seeing recently?
• ITMX seems to be prone to getting stuck recently, reason unknown although I did notice the LL OSEM was kind of close to the magnet while inserting (but this magnet is not the one getting stuck, as we can see this clearly on the camera - the prime suspect is UL I believe)
• OL beam centering on in vacuum steering optics checked before closing up

ETMY

• UL, UR and LR magents broke off at various points, and so have been reglued
• No standoff replacement was done
• Re-suspension was done using newly arrived SOS wire
• Original OSEMs were inserted, orientations have changed somewhat from their previous configuration as we did considerable experimentation with the B-R peak minimization for this optic
• OSEM filter status, shadow sensor open voltage values to be updated.
• New wire suspension clamp made at machine shop is used, 5 in lb of torque used to tighten the clamp
• HR face cleaned with F.C.
• Optic + suspension towers air baked (separately) at 34C for curing of EP30
• Checked that tables were level before closing up
• 40mm O.D. black glass baffle replaced with 50mm O.D. baffle.
• Suspension cage was moved towards ITMY by 19mm (measured using a metal spacer) by sliding along stop marking the position of the tower.

ETMX

• Al wire standoffs <--> Ruby wire standoffs (this has changed the pitch frequency)
• All magnets were knocked off at some point, but were successfully reglued
• New SOS tower, new SOS wire, new wire clamp used
• OSEM filter status, shadow sensor open voltage values to be updated.
• OSEM orientation is close to horizontal for all 5 OSEMs
• Table leveling was checked before closing up.
• 40mm O.D. black glass baffle replaced with 50mm O.D. baffle.\

PRM

• Some issues with the OSEMs were noticed, and were traced down to the Al foil caps covering the back of the (short) OSEMs, which are there to minimize the scattererd 1064nm light interfering with the shadow sensor, shorting one of the OSEMs
• To mitigate this, all Al foil caps now have a thin piece of Kapton between foil and electrical contacts on rear of OSEM
• No OSEMs were removed from the suspension cage during this process, we tried to be as gentle as possible and don't believe the shadow sensor values changed during this work, suggesting we didn't disturb the coils (PRM wasn't EQ stopped either)

SRM

• The optic itself wasn't directly touched during the vent - but was EQ stopped as work was being done on ITMY
• It initially was NOT EQ stopped, and the shift in table level caused by moving ITMY cage to the edge of the table for F.C. cleaning caused the optic to naturally drift onto the EQ stops, leading to some confusion as to what happened to the shadow sensor outputs
• The problem was diagnosed and restoring ITMY to its original position made the OSEM signals come back to normal.

SR3

• Was cleaned by drag wiping both front and back faces

SR2/PR2/PR3/BS/OMs

• These optics were NOT intentionally touched during this vent
• The alignment on the OMs was not checked before close-up

Other checks/changes

• OL beams were checked on in-vacuum input and output steering mirrors to make sure none were close to clipping
• Insides of viewport windows were checked for general cleanliness, given that we have found the outside of some of these to be rather dirty. Insides of viewports checked were deemed clean enough.
• Steve has installed a new vacuum guage to provide a more realiable pressure readout. 
• We forgot to investigate the weird behaviour of the AS beam that Yutaro and Koji identified in November. In any case, looks like the clipping of the AS beam is worse now. We will have to try and fix this using the PZT mounted OMs, and if not, we may have to consider venting again

Summary of characterization tasks to be done:

1. Mode matching into the Y arm cavity given the arm length change
2. HOM content in transmitted IR light from Y arm given the arm length change (Finesse models suggest that the 2f second order HOM resonance may have moved closer to the 00 resonance)
3. Arm loss measurement
4. Suspension diagonalization
5. Check the Qs of the optics eigenmodes - should indicate if any of our magnets, reglued or otherwise, are a little loose

I've been meaning to do this analysis ever since putting in the new laser at the X-end, and finally got down to getting all the required measurements. Here is a summary of my results, in the style of the preceeding elogs in this thread. I dither aligned the arms and maximized the green transmission DC levels, and also the alignment on the PSL table to maximize the beat note amplitude (both near and far field alignment was done), before taking these measurements. I measured the beat amplitude in a few ways, and have reported all of them below...

             XARM   YARM 
o BBPD DC output (mV), all measured with Fluke DMM
 V_DARK:     +1.0    +3.0
 V_PSL:      +8.0    +14.0
 V_ARM:      +175.0  +11.0

o BBPD DC photocurrent (uA)
I_DC = V_DC / R_DC ... R_DC: DC transimpedance (2kOhm)

 I_PSL:       3.5    5.5
 I_ARM:      87.0    4.0

o Expected beat note amplitude
I_beat_full = I1 + I2 + 2 sqrt(e I1 I2) cos(w t) ... e: mode overlap (in power)

I_beat_RF = 2 sqrt(e I1 I2)

V_RF = 2 R sqrt(e I1 I2) ... R: RF transimpedance (2kOhm)

P_RF = V_RF^2/2/50 [Watt]
     = 10 log10(V_RF^2/2/50*1000) [dBm]
     = 10 log10(e I1 I2) + 82.0412 [dBm]
     = 10 log10(e) +10 log10(I1 I2) + 82.0412 [dBm]

for e=1, the expected RF power at the PDs [dBm]
 P_RF:      -13.1  -24.5

o Measured beat note power (measured with oscilloscope, 50 ohm input impedance)      
 P_RF:      -17.8dBm (81.4mVpp)  -29.8dBm (20.5mVpp)   (38.3MHz and 34.4MHz)  
    e:        34                    30  [%]                          
o Measured beat note power (measured with Agilent RF spectrum analyzer)       
 P_RF:      -19.2  -33.5  [dBm] (33.2MHz and 40.9MHz)  
    e:       25     13    [%]                          

I also measured the various green powers with the Ophir power meter: 

o Green light power (uW) [measured just before PD, does not consider reflection off the PD]
 P_PSL:       16.3    27.2
 P_ARM:       380     19.1

Measured beat note power at the RF analyzer in the control room
 P_CR:      -36    -40.5    [dBm] (at the time of measurement with oscilloscope)
Expected    -17    - 9    [dBm] (TO BE UPDATED)

Expected Power: (TO BE UPDATED)
Pin + External Amp Gain (25dB for X, Y from ZHL-3A-S)
    - Isolation trans (1dB)
    + GAV81 amp (10dB)
    - Coupler (10.5dB)

The expected numbers for the control room analyzer in red have to be updated. 

The main difference seems to be that the PSL power on the Y broadband PD has gone down by about 50% from what it used to be. In either measurement, it looks like the mode matching is only 25-30%, which is pretty abysmal. I will investigate the situation further - I have been wanting to fiddle around with the PSL green path in any case so as to facilitate having an IR beat even when the PSL green shutter is closed, I will try and optimize the mode matching as well... I should point out that at this point, the poor mode-matching on the PSL table isn't limiting the ALS noise performance as we are able to lock reliably...

I replaced the suspected faulty DIMM earlier today (actually I replaced a pair of them as per the Sun Fire X4600 manual). I did things in the following sequence, which was the recommended set of steps according to the maintenance manual and also the set of graphics on the top panel of the unit:

1. Checked that Optimus was shut down
2. Removed the power cables from the back to cut the standby power. Two of the fan units near the front of the chassis were displaying fault lights, perhaps this has been the case since the most recent power outage after which I did not reboot Optimus
3. Took off the top cover, removed CPU 6 (labelled "G" in the unit). The manual recommends finding faulty DIMMs by looking for an LED that is supposed to indicate the location of the bad card, but I couldn't find any such LEDs in the unit we have, perhaps this is an addition to the newer modules?
4. Replaced the topmost (w.r.t the orientation the CPU normally sits inside the chassis) DIMM card with one of the new ones Steve ordered
5. Put everything back together, powered Optimus up again. Reboot went smoothly, fan unit fault lights which I mentioned earlier did not light up on the reboot so that doesn't look like an issue.

I then checked for memory errors using edac-utils, and over the last couple of hours, found no errors (corrected or otherwise, see Praful's earlier elog for the error messages that we were getting prior to the DIMM swap)- I guess we will need to monitor this for a while more before we can say that the issue has been resolved.

Looking at dmesg after the reboot, I noticed the following error messages (not related to the memory issue I think):

[   19.375865] k10temp 0000:00:18.3: unreliable CPU thermal sensor; monitoring disabled
[   19.375996] k10temp 0000:00:19.3: unreliable CPU thermal sensor; monitoring disabled
[   19.376234] k10temp 0000:00:1a.3: unreliable CPU thermal sensor; monitoring disabled
[   19.376362] k10temp 0000:00:1b.3: unreliable CPU thermal sensor; monitoring disabled
[   19.376673] k10temp 0000:00:1c.3: unreliable CPU thermal sensor; monitoring disabled
[   19.376816] k10temp 0000:00:1d.3: unreliable CPU thermal sensor; monitoring disabled
[   19.376960] k10temp 0000:00:1e.3: unreliable CPU thermal sensor; monitoring disabled
[   19.377152] k10temp 0000:00:1f.3: unreliable CPU thermal sensor; monitoring disabled

I wonder if this could explain why the fans on Optimus often go into overdrive and make a racket? For the moment, the fan volume seems normal, comparable to the other SunFire X4600s we have running like megatron and FB...

I did apt-get update and then apt-get upgrade on optimus. All systems are nominal.

PMC and IMC were aligned on Friday (16th) and Today (19th).

The PD and lens for the ringdown experiment were removed as they were blocking the WFS.

- Updated the circuit diagrams:

IMC WFS Demodulator Board, Rev. 40m https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-D1600503

IMC WFS Whitening Board, Rev. 40m https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-D1600504

- Measured the noise levels of the whitening board, demodboard, and nominal free running WFS signals.

- IMC WFS demod phases for 8ch adjusted

Injected an IMC PDH error point offset (@1kHz, 10mV, 10dB gain) and adjusted the phase to have no signal in the Q phase signals.

- The WFS2 PITCH/YAW matrix was fixed

It was found that the WFS heads were rotated by 45 deg (->OK) in CW and CCW for WFS1 and 2, respectively (oh!), while the input matrices were identical! This made the pitch and yaw swapped for WFS2. (See attachment)

- Measured the TFs MC1/2/3 P/Y actuation to the error signals

Noise analysis of the WFS error signals.

Attachment 1: All error signals compared with the noise contribution measured with the RF inputs or the whitening inputs terminated.

Attachment 2: Same plot for all the 16 channels. The first plot (WFS1 I1) shows the comparison of the current noise contributions and the original noise level measured with the RF terminated with the gain adjusted along with the circuit modification for the fair comparison. This plot is telling us that the electronics noise was really close to the error signal.

I wonder if we have the calibration of the IMC suspensions somewhere so that I can convert these plots in to rad/sqrtHz...?

WFS1 / WFS2 demod phases and WFS signal matrix

Signal transfer function measurements

C1:SUS-MC*_ASCPIT_EXC channels were excited for swept sine measurements.

The TFs to WFS1-I1~4, Q1~4, WFS1/2_PIT/YAW, MC2TRANS_PIT/YAW signals were recorded.

The MC1 and MC3 actuation seems to have ~30Hz elliptic LPF somewhere in the electronics chain.
This effect was compensated by subtracting the approximated time delay of 0.022sec.

The TFs were devided by freq^2 to make the response flat and averaged between 7Hz to 15Hz.
The results have been summarized in Attachment 3&4.

Attachment 4 has the signal sensing matrix. Note that this matrix was measured with the input gain of 0.1.

Input matrix for diagonalizing the actuation/sensor response

Pitch

e.g. To produce pure WFS1P reaction, => -1.59 MC1P + 0.962 MC2P + 0.425 MC3P

Yaw

Now, the output matrices in the previous entry were implemented.
The WFS servo loops have been engaged for several hours.
So far the REFL and TRANS look straight. Let's see how it goes.

It didn't go crazy at least for the past 24hours.

• For the rough calibration below 10 Hz, we can use the SUS OSEM cal: the SUSPIT and SUSYAW error signals are in units of micro-radians.
• It seems from the noise plots that the demod board is now dominating over the whitening board noise.
• If the RF signals at the demod input are low enough, we can consider either increasing the light power on the WFS or increasing the IMC mod. depth.
• We should look at the out-of-lock light power on the WFS and re-examine what the 'safe' level is. We used to do this based on the dissipated electrical power (bias voltage x photocurrent).

At Hanford, there is this issue with laser jitter turning into an IMC error point noise injection. I wonder if we can try out taking the acoustic band WFS signal and adding it to the MC error point as a digital FF. We could then look at the single arm error signal to see if this makes any improvement. There might be too much digital delay in the WFS signals if the clock rate in the model is too low.

Koji responding to Rana

> For the rough calibration below 10 Hz, we can use the SUS OSEM cal: the SUSPIT and SUSYAW error signals are in units of micro-radians.

I can believe the calibration for the individual OSEMs. But the input matrix looked pretty random, and I was not sure how it was normalized.
If we accept errors by a factor of 2~3, I can just naively believe the calibration factors.

> If the RF signals at the demod input are low enough, we can consider either increasing the light power on the WFS or increasing the IMC mod. depth.

The demod chip has the conversion factor of about the unity. We increased the gains of the AF stages in the demod and whitening boards. However, we only have the RMS of 1~20 counts. This means that we have really small RF signals. We should check what's happening at the RF outputs of the WFS units. Do we have any attenuators in the RF chain? Can we skip them without making the WFS units unstable?

The WFS gains are supposedly maximized already. If we remotely try to increase the gain, the two MAX4106 chips in the RF path will oscillate with each other.

We should insert a bi-directional coupler (if we can find some LEMO to SMA converters) and find out how much actual RF is getting into the demod board.

https://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:30889/detcharsummary/day/20170114/sus/susdrift/

ITMY is not like the others. Real or just OSEM madness?

Oot on the streets and in the chat rooms, people often ask, "What is up with the MC_F calibration?".

Not being sure of the wiring in the c1ioo model, I have formed this screencap of today's model and put it here. The MC_LENGTH and MC_FREQ are the filter banks which would calibrate these channels. In the filter banks there were various version of a 'dewhite' filter. They were all approximately z=150, p=15, g =1 @ DC, but with ~1% differences. I don't trust their provenance and so I've enforced symmetry and fixed their names to reflect what they are (150:15). I have also turned on one filter in MC_FREQ so that now the whitening of the Pentek Interface board is compensated.

Why is this TF 1/f? It should be -20 dB/decade if MC_F is in units of Hz* and MCL is a pendulum response. Perhaps its because the combination of the Koji summing box, the Thorlabs HV driver, and the Pomona box forms an additional 1/f ? IF so, this would explain the TF we see. Once we get confirmation from Koji, we can load the TF into the MC_FREQ filter bank and then MC_F will be in units of Hz (as will the summary pages).

(along the way I've also turned off the craaaazzzy servo input enable tickling that gets put in the MC AutoLocker every April Fool's leap year - resist the temptation)

Since we have a frequency counter system here and some oscillators, I wonder if we can just calibrate the MC_L and MC_F directly using a mixer lashed up to one of the counters. If so, and we can get the stabilized laser frequency noise down below 10 mHz/rHz, maybe this is a viable alternative method to the photon calibrators. Counting zero crossings is more honest than counting photons.

The filters were made in response to a measurement of the pentek whitening boards in 2015 (ELOG 11550), but this level of accuracy probably isn't important.

Summary:

I got around to doing this measurement today, using a minicircuits bi-directional coupler (ZFBDC20-61-HP-S+), along with some SMA-LEMO cables.

• With the IMC "well aligned" (MC transmission maximized, WFS control signals ~0), the RF power per quadrant into the Demod board is of the order of tens of pW up to a 100pW.
• With MC1 misaligned such that the MC transmission dropped by ~10%, the power per quadrant into the demod board is of the order of hundreds of pW.
• In both cases, the peak at 29.5MHz was well above the analyzer noise floor (>20dB for the smaller RF signals), which was all that was visible in the 1MHz span centered around 29.5 MHz (except for the side-lobes described later).
• There is anomalously large reflection from Quadrant 2 input to the Demod board for both WFS
• The LO levels are ~-12dBm, ~2dBm lower than the 10dBm that I gather is the recommended level from the AD831 datasheet

Details:

I first aligned the mode cleaner, and offloaded the DC offsets from the WFS servos.

The bi-directional coupler has 4 ports: Input, Output, Coupled forward RF and Coupled Reverse RF. I connected the LEMO going to the input of the Demod board to the Input, and connected the output of the coupler to the Demod board (via some SMA-LEMO adaptor cables). The two (20dB) coupled ports were connected to the Agilent spectrum analyzer, which have input impedance 50ohms and hence should be impedance matched to the coupled outputs. I set the analyzer to span 1MHz (29-30MHz), IF BW 30Hz, 0dB input attenuation. It was not necessary to turn on averaging to resolve the peaks at ~29.5MHz since the IF bandwidth was fine enough.

I took two sets of measurements, one with the IMC well aligned (I maximized the MC Trans as best as I could to ~15,000 cts), and one with a macroscopic misalignment to MC1 such that the MC Trans fell to 90% of its usual value (~13,500 cts). The peak function on the analyzer was used to read off the peak height in dBm. I then converted this to RF power, which is summarized in the table below. I did not account for the main line loss of the coupler, but according to the datasheet, the maximum value is 0.25dB so there numbers should be accurate to ~10% (so I'm really quoting more S.Fs than I should be).

For the well aligned measurement, there was ~0.4mW incident on WFS1, and ~0.3mW incident on WFS2 (measured with Ophir power meter, filter out).

I am not sure how to interpret the numbers for quadrants #2 and #6 in the first table, where the reverse coupled RF power was greater than the forward coupled RF power. But this measurement was repeatable, and even in the second table, the reverse coupled power from these quadrants are more than 10x the other quadrants. The peaks were also well above (>10dBm) the analyzer noise floor 

I haven't gone through the full misalginment -> Power coupled to TEM10 mode algebra to see if these numbers make sense, but assuming a photodetector responsivity of 0.8A/W, the product (P₁P₂) of the powers of the beating modes works out to ~tens of pW (for the IMC well aligned case), which seems reasonable as something like P₁~10uW, P₂ ~ 5uW would lead to P₁P₂~50pW. This discussion was based on me wrongly looking at numbers for the aLIGO WFS heads, and Koji pointed out that we have a much older generation here. I will try and find numbers for the version we have and update this discussion.

Misc:

1. For the sake of completeness, the LO levels are ~ -12.1dBm for both WFS demod boards (reflected coupling was negligible)
2. In the input signal coupled spectrum, there were side lobes (about 10dB lower than the central peak) at 29.44875 MHz and 29.52125 MHz (central peak at 29.485MHz) for all of the quadrants. These were not seen for the LO spectra.
3. Attached is a plot of the OSEM sensor signals during the time I misaligned MC1 (in both pitch and yaw approximately by equal amounts). Assuming 2V/mm for the OSEM calibration, the approximate misalignment was by ~10urad in each direction.
4. No IMC suspension glitching the whole time I was working today

                    Oct.  5, 2015              ETMY He/Ne replaced by 1103P, sr P919645,  made Dec 2014, after 2 years

                   Jan. 24, 2017              ETMY He/Ne replaced by 1103P,  sr P947049,  made Apr 2016,  after 477 hrs running hot

jiSome notes on the FSS configuration: ELOG 10321

It was raised at the Wednesday meeting that I did not check the RF pickup levels while measuring the RF error signal levels into the Demod board. So I closed the PSL shutter, and re-did the measurement with the same measurement scheme. The detailed power levels (with no light incident on the WFS, so all RF pickup) is reported in the table below.

These numbers can be subtracted from the corresponding columns in the previous elog to get a more accurate estimate of the true RF error signal levels. Note that the abnormal behaviour of Quadrant #2 on both WFS demod boards persists.

Someone installed "Debian" on allegra. Why? Dataviewer doesn't work on there. Is there some advantage to making this thing have a different OS than the others? Any objections to going back to Ubuntu12?

My elog negligence punchcard is getting pretty full... It's pretty much for the same reason as using Debian for optimus; much of the workstation software is getting packaged for Debian, which could offload our need for setting things up in a custom 40m way. Hacking the debian-focused software.ligo.org repos into Ubuntu has caused me headaches in the past. Allegra wasn't being used often, so I figured it was a good test bed for trying things out.

The dataviewer issue was dataviewer's inability to pull the `fb` out of `fb:8088` in the NDSSERVER env variable. I made a quick fix for it in the dataviewer launching script, but there is probably a better way to do it.

and the song remains the same...

the version of SVN on these workstations is ahead of the one on the other workstations so now we can't do 'svn up' on any of the Ubuntu12 machines. One allegra and optimus I get this error:

controls@allegra|GWsummaries> svn up
Updating '.':
svn: E180001: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'file:///cvs/cds/caltech/svn/trunk/GWsummaries'
svn: E180001: Unable to open an ra_local session to URL
svn: E180001: Unable to open repository 'file:///cvs/cds/caltech/svn/trunk/GWsummaries'

I'm not sure if its possible to downgrade our chans repo back to the old one, but I highly recommend that no one do 'svn upgrade' in any of our repos until we remove all of the Debian installs in the 40m lab or hire a full-time sysadmin.

Re-aligned the beam going into the PMC today around 5 PM. I noticed that its all in pitch and since I moved both of the mirrors by the same amount it is essentially a vertical translation.

I wonder if the PMC is just moving up and down due to thermal expansion in the mount? How else would we get a pure vertical translation? Need to remember next time if the beam goes up or down, and by how many knob turns, and see how it correlates to the lab temperature.

I was able to bring back svn 1.6 formatting to /cvs/cds/caltech/chans by doing the following on nodus:

Note that I used the http address for the repository. The svn repository doesn't live at file:///cvs/cds/caltech/svn anymore; all of our checkouts (e.g. in the scripts directory) use http to get the one true repo location, regardless of where it lives on nodus' filesystem. (I suppose we could also use https://nodus.martian:30889/svn to stick to the local network, but I don't think we're that limited by the caltech network speed)

Presumably, at some point we will want to introduce a newer operating system into the 40m, as ubuntu 12.04 hits end-of-life in April 2017. Ubuntu 16.04 includes svn 1.8, so we'll also hit this issue if we choose that OS. 

Aside from the svn issues, this directory (/cvs/cds/caltech/chans) only contains pre-2010 channels. Filters and DAQ ini files currently live in /opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/chans, which is not under version control. It's also not clear to me why summary page configurations should be kept in this /cvs/cds place.

True - its an issue. Koji and I are updating zita into Ubuntu16 LTS. If it looks like its OK with various tools we'll swap over the others into it. Until then I figure we're best off turning allegra back into Ubuntu12 to avoid a repeat of this kind of conflict. Once the workstations in the LLO control room are running smoothly on a new OS for a year, we can transfer into that. I don't think any of us wants to be the CDS beta tester for DV or DTT.

Just to be clear, since there seems to be some confusion, the SVN issue has nothing to do with Debian vs. Ubuntu.  SVN made non-backwards compatible changes to their working copy data format that breaks newer checkouts with older clients.  You will run into the exact same problem with newer Ubuntu versions.

I recommend the 40m start moving towards the reference operating systems (Debian 8 or SL7) as that's where CDS is moving.  By moving to newer Ubuntu versions you're moving away from CDS support, not towards it.

No, not confused on that point. We just will not be testing OS versions at the 40m or running multiple OS's on our workstations. As I've said before, we will only move to so-called 'reference' systems once they've been in use for a long time.

Ubuntu16 is not to my knowledge used for any CDS system anywhere.  I'm not sure how you expect to have better support for that.  There are no pre-compiled packages of any kind available for Ubuntu16.  Good luck, you big smelly doofuses. Nyah, nyah, nyah.

Summary:

Craig and I have been trying to put together a Simulink diagram of the proposed alternative calibration scheme. Each time I talk the idea over with someone, I convince myself it makes sense, but then I try and explain it to someone else and get more confused. Probably I am not even thinking about this in the right way. So I am putting what I have here for comments/suggestions.

What's the general idea?

Suppose the PSL is locked to the MC cavity, and the AUX laser is locked to the arm cavity (with sufficiently high BW). Then by driving a line in the arm cavity length, and beating the PSL and AUX lasers, we can determine how much we are modulating the arm cavity length in metres by reading out the beat frequency between the two lasers, provided the arm cavity length is precisely known.

So we need:

1. Both lasers to be stabilized to be able to sense the line we are driving
2. A high bandwidth PDH loop for locking the AUX laser to the arm cavity such that the AUX laser frequency is able to track the line we are driving
3. An accurate and precise way to read out the beat frequency (the proposal here is to use an FPGA based readout)
4. An accurate measurement of the arm length (I think we know the arm lengths to <0.1% so this shouldn't dominate any systematic error).

To be able to sense a 1kHz line being driven at 1e-16 m amplitude, I estimate we need a beat note stability of ~1mHz/rtHz at 1kHz.

Requirements and what we have currently:

• The PSL is locked to the mode-cleaner, and the arm cavity is locked to the PSL. The former PDH loop is high BW, and so we expect the stabilized PSL to have frequency noise of ~1mHz/rtHz at about 1kHz (to be measured and confirmed)
• The AUX laser is locked to the arm cavity with a medium-BW (~10kHz UGF) PDH servo. From past out-of-loop ALS beat measurements, I estimate the expected frequency noise of the AUX laser at 1kHz to be ~1Hz/rtHz with the current PDH setup
• Rana suggested we "borrow" the stability of the PSL by locking the AUX laser and PSL in a high bandwidth PLL - if we want this loop to have ~300kHz BW, then we need to use an EOM as an actuator. The attached Simulink diagram (schematic representation only, though I think I have measurements of many of those transfer functions/gains anyways) shows the topology I had in mind. Perhaps I did not understand this correctly, but if we have such a loop with high gain at 1kHz, and the error signal being the beat between PSL and AUX, won't it squish the modulation we are applying @1kHz?
• Is it feasible to instead add a parallel path to the end PDH loop with an EOM as an actuator (similar to what we do for the IMC locking)? Ideally, what we want is an end PDH loop which squishes the free-running NPRO noise to ~1mHz/rtHz at 1kHz instead of the 1Hz/rtHz we have currently. This loop would then also have negligible tracking error at 1kHz. Then, we could have a low bandwidth PLL offloading onto the temperature of the crystal to keep the beat between the two lasers hovering around the PSL frequency.

Hardware:

On the hardware side of things, we need:

• Broadband EOM
• FSS box to drive the EOM (Rana mentioned there is a spare available in the Cryo lab)

Koji and I briefly looked through the fiber inventory we have yesterday. We have some couplers (one mounted) and short (5m) patch fibers. But I think the fiber infrastructure we have in place currently is adequate - we have the AUX light brought to the PSL table, and there is a spare fiber running the other way if we want to bring the PSL IR to the end as well.

I need to also think about where we can stick the EOM in given physical constraints on the EX table and the beam diameter/aperture of EOM...

Question for Craig: What does the SNR of our lines have to be? IF we're only trying to calibrate the actuator in the audio band over long time scales, it seems we could get by with more frequency noise. Assuming we want a 1% calibration at 50-500 Hz, what is the requirement on the frequency noise PSD curve?

We get SNR in two ways: the amplitude of applied force and the integration time.  So we are limited in two ways: stability of the lock to applied forces and time of locklosses / calibration fluctuations.

At the sites, you probably know that we blow our spectrum out of the water with the calibration lines, with SNRs of about 100 on the scale of about 10 seconds.  For us this might be impossible, since we aren't as quiet.

If we want 1% calibration on our sweeps, we'll need  0.01 = Uncertainty = sqrt( (1 - COH^2)/(2 * Navg * COH^2) ), where COH is the coherence of the transfer function measurement and Navg is the number of measurements at a specific frequency.  This equation comes from Bendat and Piersol, and is subject to a bunch of assumptions which may not be true for us (particularly, that the plant is stationary in time).

If we let Navg = 10, then COH ~ 0.999.

Coherence = Gxy^2/(Gxx * Gyy), where x(t) and y(t) are the input signal and output signal of the transfer function measurement, Gxx and Gyy are the spectral densities of x and y, and Gxy is the cross-spectral density.  

Usually SNR = P_signal / P_noise, but for us SNR = A_signal / A_noise.

Eric Q and Evan H helped me find the relationship between Coherence and SNR:

P = Pn + Pc, Pn = P * (1 - Coh), Pc = P * Coh

==> SNR = sqrt( Pc / Pn ) = sqrt( Coh / 1 - Coh )

From Coh ~ 0.999, SNR ~ 30.

OK, but the questions still stands: "Assuming we want a 1% calibration at 50-500 Hz, what is the requirement on the frequency noise PSD curve?"

The input offset on the MC length servo board changes the lock point of the length loop (by how much? need to calibrate this slider into meters & Hz).

The SUM signal on the MC WFS is ~few 1000. This is several times larger than the pit/yaw signals. This is bad. it means that the TEM00 mode on the WFS (or what the WFS interperets as a TEM00) is larger than the TEM01/10 that its supposed to measure.

So if the beam moves on the WFS head it will convert this large common mode signal into a differential one.

We moved the MC Servo offset around from -3 to +3 V today and saw that it does affect the transmitted light level, but we need to think more to see how to put the offset at the real center of the resonance. This is complicated by the fact that the MCWFS loops seem to have some several minutes time constant so things are essentially always drifting.

1. Characterize and juice up the WFS loops.
2. Figure out how to set the MC length loop offset. Is this bad offset changing the zero point of the MC WFS loops?
3. If so, it may be a source of excess jitter noise in the interferometer.

I changed the McREFL SMOO to make it easier to use this noisy channel to diagnose small alignment changes:

caput C1:IOO-MC_RFPD_DCMON.SMOO 0.1

What we want from the light source for the AS port light injection:

• Frequency control for locking and maintaining known offset from arm cavity resonances -> see below
• Fast extinguishing light in the IFO -> AOM first order switching

We have four possible laser sources that we can use for the injection of 1064 nm from the back:

• There are ~65 mW of IR power coming from the PSL doubling oven, of which ~2mW are used for the fiber beat box. The remaining light is currently dumped on the PSL table and would be available. It is picked off after the PMC and does not have any of the sidebands.
• There is a ~200 mW Lightwave NPRO on the PSL table that is currently unused.
• Koji said he has a ~500mW NPRO in the OMC lab that has no PZT actuation. I contacted a couple companies about fiber-coupled variable AOM frequency shifters that we can pair with this laser.
• I don't think using the high power beam of the PSL itself is a good idea, especially if we want to map the loss on the optics, because' we'll need it for the dither locking

I think for maximum flexibility it's best to fiber-couple whichever source we choose on the PSL table and then just collimate it out of a fiber on the AS table. This way if we want to add fiber-coupled modulators of any kind it's a plug-and-play modification.

Different frequency control schemes are:

• Modulate sidebands on the light and stabilize directly to the arm, using POX/Y or back-reflection at AS
  • Free-space resonant EOM
  • Free-space broadband EOM with Rich's resonant amplifier attachment
  • Fiber-coupled EOM
• Offset phaselock:
  • PSL IR: Transfer mode-cleaner stability
    • Can lock arms while measurement in progress, but will have PSL IR light on PDs
  • Green from the end;
    • Broadly tunable laser frequency and no interference from IR.

Either way we'll need a few things:

• Faraday Isolator
  • required for PDH locking, optional if we phaselock instead
• AOM
  • We have free-space available, looking into fiber-coupled ones with frequency tuning
  • Fast switching electronics
• Various fiber stuff
  • We have enough to set up the fiber coupling of one light source. I'm starting with the 200 mW NPRO but this is technically interchangable.

I'm working on how to best set this up at the AS port and interfere with normal operation as little as possible. Ideally we use a Faraday just like for squeezed light injection, but this requires some modification of the layout, although nothing that involves mode-matching.

         March  17,  2017         ETMX laser replaced at LT 3y with 1103P, sn T8070866

I repeated this measurement as follows:

1. Added a filter in the MC_F filterbank (FM9) to account for the Pomona box between the PZT control signal and the laser PZT (pole@2.9Hz). So the filter bank at the time of TF measurement looks like this:
   
2. Measured TF from driving MC2 (with C1:SUS-MC2_MCL_OUT channel) to C1:IOO-MC_F, which is the output of the above filter bank. The response is the expected 1/f^2 shape of the free optic
    
   
3. From this transfer function, the magnitude is 0.0316 ct/ct. Using the value of 6nm/ct for the MC2 actuator gain that I found in a previous elog entry, I calibrated the MC_F output into Hz using the calibration factor 3.95MHz/ct (FM10 in the above filterbank).

Here is a calibrated MC_F spectrum:

RXA: I've added this plot of the free-running noise of the Lightwave NPRO which is probably similar to our Innolight Mephisto. Seems like the laser is quieter than MC_F everywhere below 100 Hz.

What readouts do we have for the PMC length? If we could have a calibrated & whitened error and control signal for the PMC up to 16 kHz, perhaps we could see at what frequencies we can use it as a faux-RefCav.

Going to the summary pages and looking at 'Today' seems to break it and crash the browser. Other tabs are OK, but 'summary' is our default page.

I've noticed this happening for a couple of days now. Today, I moved the .ini files which define the config for the pages from the old chans/ location into the /users/public_html/detcharsummary/ConfigFiles/ dir. Somehow, we should be maintaining version control of detcharsummary, but I think right now its loose and free.

In http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/11793 I posted the calibrated PMC free-running displcament with/without IMC locked. Unfortunately, this measurement was done with a part of the IMC electronics not perfect (https://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8081/40m/11794). I did the same measurement after the fix, but there is no low freq data http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/11795.

Assuming we have the similar error signal leve in the low freq band as The entry 11793, the IMC is considered to be noisier than the PMC between 0.8 and 4Hz. But we should do the same measurement with the current electronics.

The PMC calibration can be found in this entry http://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8080/40m/11780

Debian doesn't like EPICS. Or our XY plots of beam spots...Sad!

    Jan. 26,  2017              RIN test stared with P947034, made Apr. 2016  

    Apr.  10,  2017              purchased two 1103P from Edmund:  sr P964438 & sr P964431, made 02/2017

1064 nm Semiconductor Laser Fiber Distribution System and Mirror Tomography

Below threshold these Semiconductor Fabry-Perot lasers have an axial mode structure with a spacing of about a THz. As you turn up the current to above threshold the first mode to oscillate saturates the gain down on all the modes and only it oscillates.  The laser I have here in my office (a backup for the one you have at the 40 meter) has a wavelength of 1064.9 nm at 70 Degrees C.  We should be able to temperature tune it down to 1064.3 nm although this could be a bit tedious the first time we do it. The specifications claim a "spectrum width" of 1.097 nm which I believe is the temperature tuning range.  I don’t know what the line width is but it will be single frequency and we shouldn’t have mode hoping problems.  So we should be able to use it in the “Mirror Tomography” experiment.  You might want to use some sort of polarization diversity to avoid the problems of fiber polarization drift.

There have been 2 student projects on using the fiber distributed PD frequency response at1064 nm laser.

“Automated Photodiode Frequency Response Measurement System,” Alexander Cole - T1300618

“Final Report: Automated Photodiode Frequency Response Measurement System for Caltech 40m lab,” Nichin Sreekantaswamy - P140021

I’ll look up a few more references and add include them in the next elog.

Eric

[johannes, gautam]

I forgot we had done this last year already, but we updated the control room network switch labels and double checked all the connections. Here is the status of the connections and labels as of today:

There are a few minor changes w.r.t. labeling and port numbers compared to the Dec 2015 entry. But it looks like there was no IP clash between Rossa and anything (which was one of the motivations behind embarking on this cleanup). We confirmed by detatching the cable at the PC end of Rossa, and noticed the break in the ping signals. Plugging the cable back in returned the pings. Because Rossa is currently un-bootable, I couldn't check the MAC address.

We also confirmed all of this by using the web browser interface for the switch (IP = 192.168.113.249).

I tried to get some minute trend data today, but was unable to get it from inside or outside the control room using our matlab or python tools.

It seems the NDS2 interface will not work anywhere since it needs our minute trends to be written as frames; in the last version that Jamie left us, our minute trend frame files are not being written since they lead to periodic daqd crashes.

From inside the control room, we can get the minute trend (only with DataViewer). I've attached 30 days of BS_X just to show its real.

We can get the numerical data from the Grace plot window using the menu option Data->Export->ASCII.

You must select all of the 'Write Sets' to get all of the traces in the plot window. The resulting ascii file is not in a great format, but its not terrible.

With the objective of designing a telescope system for the Gig-E, a system of two lenses is implemented. A rough schematic of the telescope system is attached. Variables in the system include the focal lengths of the two spherical lenses(f1, f2), distance between the lenses(t), distance between the test mass and the lens combination(u), distance between the other lens and the sensor(v). Also the size of the object to be desired ranges from 3’’ which is the size of the test mass to 1’’ which is approximately focusing on the beam spot implying that the required magnification ranges from 0.06089 to 0.1826 (since the sensor image circle size if ¼”)
The lenses are selected to be 2” in diameter so as to ensure sufficient collected power.

Going through the focal lengths available, namely 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 mm, and noting that the object distance would be within the ranges of 1500 to 2500 mm, plots of various accessible u and v for different values of t were obtained. This optimization was done to ensure the proper selection of the lenses. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis was performed and plots depicting the dependence of magnification on the precision limiting measurements of u (1 mm) and t (5 mm) were obtained. (These were scatter plots quantifying the deviation from the desired magnification ranges). The plots depict the error term induced on the magnification if there was an error in measuring the distance between the lenses as 5mm and if the precision in measuring the object to lens distance by 1mm.

The telescope design might be limited by spherical aberrations and coma, which might be resolved by either using aspherical lenses or by increasing the f-number (typically with an f number around 5 or 6). The use of aspherical lenses particularly parabolic lenses was considered, however this was found to be quite an expensive route. 

Analyzing the plots and taking into consideration the restrictions of the slotted lens tubes, the precision in measurement of the distances, a 150 mm- 250mm focal length solution is proposed. With a diameter of 2”, the f number is computed to be 2.95 and 4.92. With this combination and the object distances lying between 1500 to 2500 mm, the image distance to the sensor varies between 51 to 100mm. So a slotted lens tube controlling the distance between the lenses would be required.

I also considered a combination of focal lengths 250mm and 250mm, as then both of the lenses would at least have an f number of 4.92. The results for this combination are also attached. The image distance from the lens combination is about a 100 to a 140 mm. However, this would require much longer slotted length tubes thereby adding to the cost of the system. The number of accessible u-v points is the same as that for the 150-250 combination. 

I am still trying to search for a much more concrete way of quantifying aberrations.

Motivation:

I got some hands-on-experience on using RF photodetectors and the Network Analyzer from Koji. There were newly purchased RF photodetectors from Electro-Optics Technology, Inc.. These were InGaAs Photodetectors with model no.: 120-10050-0001(ET-3010) and 120-10056-0001(ET-3040). The User Guide for the two detectors can be found here. This is the first time we bought the ET-3010 model PD for the 40m lab. It has an operation bandwith >1.5GHz(not tested yet), much higher than other PDs of its kind. This can be used for detecting the output as we 'sweep' the laser frequency for getting data on the optical cavities and the resonating modes inside the cavity. We just tested out the ET-3040 model today but will test out the ET-3010 next week.

Tools and Machines Used:

We worked on the optical bench right in front of the main entrance to the lab. We put the cables, power chords, etc. to their respective places. We used screws, poles, T's, I's, multimeter, Network/Spectrum Analyzer(along with the moving table), a lab computer, Oscilloscope, power supply and the aforementioned PDs for our testing. We took these items from the stack of tools at the Y-arm and the boxes of various different labelled palced near the X-arm. We moved the Network Analyzer(along with the bench) from near the Y-arm to our workplace.

Procedure:

I will include a rough schematic of the setup later.

We alligned the reference PD(High Speed Photoreceiver model 1611) and the test PD(ET-3040 in this case) to get optimal power output. We had set the pump current for the laser at 19.5mA which produced a power of 1.00mW at the output of the fiber couple. At the reference detector the measured voltage was about 1.8V and at the DUT it was about 15mV. The DC transimpedance for the reference detector is 10kOhm and its responsivity to 1064 nm is around 0.75A/W. Using this we calculate the power at the reference detector to be 0.24mW. The DC transimpedance for the DUT is 50Ohm and the responsivity of about 0.9A/W. This amounts to a power of about 0.33mW. After measuring the DC voltages, we connected the laser input to the Network Analyzer and gave in an RF signal with -10dBm and frequency modulation from 100 kHz to 500 MHz. The RF output from the Analyzer is coupled to the Reference Channel(CHR) of the analyzer via a 20dB directional coupler. The AC output of the reference detector is given at Channel A(CHA) and the output from the DUT is given to Channel B(CHB). We got plots of the ratios between the reference detector, DUT and the coupled refernce for the Transfer Function and the Phase. We found that the cut-off frequency for the ET3040 model was at arounf 55 MHz(stated as >50MHz in the data sheet). We have stored the data using the lab PC in the directory .../scripts/general/netgpibdata/data.

Result:

The bandwidth of the ET-3040 PD is as stated in the data sheet, >50 MHz.

Precaution:

These PDs have an internal power supply of 3V for ET-3040 and 6V for ET-3010. Do not leave these connected to any instruments after the experiments have been performed or else the batteries will get drained if there is any photocurrent on the PDs.

To Do:

A similar procedure has to be followed in order to test the ET-3010 PD. I will be doing this tentatively on Monday.

Since the f numbers of the lenses in the proposed design with biconvex lenses are a little less than 5 and the conjugate ratio(that is the ratio of object to image distance) is greater than 5, I explored the use of plano convex lenses, but with the same focal lengths, the accessible u-v range is restricted with the planoconvex rather than biconvex lenses.
On Friday, I had a discussion with Gautam and Steve about the hardware that is the cylindrical enclosures for the camera and the telescope and we examined two such aluminum cylindrical enclosures. One of them was the one being currently employed for the cameras. The dimensions were measured and the length was found to be 8’’ and an outer diameter of 26 cm within an error of 0.5 cm.
The other enclosure was longer with a length of 52 cm(±0.5 cm), outer diameter of 10”(±0.1”) and an inner diameter of 23.7cm(±0.1cm). Pictures of these enclosures are attached.
Both of these enclosures have internal optical rail to mount the camera and the telescope system. Depending on the weight of the telescope system(that includes the weight of the slotted lens tubes, the lenses), it might be more efficient to clamp the telescope system itself on the rails with the low weight camera mounted on the lens tube.
I also went around to get an idea of distance of the GigE from the test masses. This was just a step to verify if the object distances were really in the ranges being taken into consideration, that is between 1500 and 2500 mm. I also tried to cross check the measurements with the CAD drawing of the 40m. However, as I have been informed, the distances in the CAD version are not updated.

The distances from the optic to the CCD detector would range from around 75.1 cm for MC2, 94.01 cm for ITMX, 97.21 cm for ETMX, 117.19 cm for ITMY and 88.463 cm for ETMY. The illuminator for the ETMY was disconnected, so Gautam helped me access the manual lamp control to enable me to take measurements.
The values for ETMX, MC2 and ITMY are subject to an error of ±1’’. Due to a lot of obstructions, the values for ETMY and ITMX may be subject to a lot more error. Even so, these distances are clearly less than 2 meters, prompting me to run the simulations again and verify that the chosen combination is still useful.

As for the slotted lens tubes to mount the 2” lenses, the following options are available on the Thorlabs catalog. CVI and Edmunds do not seem to offer much of the stackable lens tubes.

SM2L30C is a lens tube onto which the optic can be mounted without the need of a spanner wrench. It also has a length of 3”. However, it has a rotatable slip shield which can be rotated open as and when the access to optic is required. However, there might be a slight compromise with rigidity here.

SM2L30 is a lens tube with internal thread depth of 3”, the optic can be mounted using spanner wrench and a retainer ring. The optic cannot be accessed from both ends of the tube here.
SM2M30 is a lens tube with no external threads, therefore lens tube couplers would be required to stack the tubes. The optic is accessible from both ends here though.

Considering the merits and demerits of all these available options, the use of SM2L30 might be considered as it provides a quick and efficient way of stacking multiple lens tubes. As for accessing the optic from both sides, using multiple tubes helps overcome the problem and still ensures that we are able to access a number of separation distances as per requirement.
Thorlabs also offers an internal C to external SM2 adapter so that the lens tube could be fixed onto the C mount of the camera. 

I would be examining the use of 1" diameter lenses for the eyepiece as suggested by Rana, as that might give us more flexibility. 

I am adding the text files with the data readings and paramater settings along with the Bode Plot of the data. I plotted these graphs using matplotlib module with python 2.7.