ID |
Date |
Author |
Type |
Category |
Subject |
1
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Wed Jul 11 23:01:01 2012 |
janosch | Optics | Characterization | starting the multi-color scatter experiment |
Steve Maloney, a visiting highschool teacher, and I have started to set up a new scattering experiment in the Richter lab. The idea is to take images of large-angle scattered light using different lasers. We have one 633nm laser, and 532nm and 405nm laser pointers. The goal is to uniformly illuminate the same disk of about 1cm diameter on a silver-coated mirror with all three colors. We use a silver-coated mirror to make sure that the light is reflected from the same layer so that all colors are scattered from the same abberations.

The image shows one of the laser pointers and the HeNe laser. The first step is to widen the beam with a f=5cm broadband, AR coated lens (Newport PAC15AR.15). The diverging beam is then aligned through an iris to give it the right size on the mirror. In this way, illumination is almost uniform on the mirror surface.
 
The mirror is mounted over the rotation axis of a unipolar stepper motor. For the moment we only took images from fixed direction (initially with a commercial digital camera, later with a monochromatic Sony XT-ST50 CCD camera. The problem with the commercial camera was that you cannot completely control what the camera is doing. Also it would have been very difficult to calibrate the image once you start comparing scattering with different colors. A f=7.5cm lens is used to image the illuminated disk on the CCD chip to make maximal use of its resolution. The CCD signal is read out on a Windows machine with an EasyCap video capture device connected to a USB port. Standard software can then be used to take images or record videos. For some reason the capture device reduces the image size to 640x480 pixels (a little less than the size of the CCD chip).
Eventually the camera and lens will be mounted on a metal arm whose orientation is controlled by the stepper motor. The stepper motor was part of the Silicon Motor Reference Design (Silicon Laboratories). It comes with all kinds of cables and a motor control board. Software is provided to upload compiled C code to the board, but for our purposes it is easiest to use primitive communication methods between the PC and the board. We are working with HyperTerminal that used to be part of Windows installations, but now it has to be downloaded from the web. This program can send simple commands through TCP/IP and COM ports. These commands allow us to position the motor and define its rotation speed. Since our PC does not have a serial port, we purchased a Belkin USB Serial Adapter. You will have to search the web to find suitable drivers for Windows 7 x64. Luckily, Magic Control Technology has similar products and the driver for their U232-P9 USB/serial adapter also works for the Belkin product.
So our goal for the remaining weeks is to take many images from various angles and to set up the experiment in a way that we can VNC into our lab PC and control everything from the Red Door Cafe.
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2
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Fri Jul 13 10:34:35 2012 |
janosch | Optics | Characterization | camera image |
We were confused a bit about how the camera image changes when you move the arm that holds the camera and lens around the mirror. It seems that scattering centers move in ways that cannot be explained by a misaligned rotation axis. So we wanted to make sure that the mirror surface is actually imaged as we intended to. We generated a white grid with 0.7cm spacing and black background on a monitor. The image that we saw is exactly how we expected it to be. So the image mystery has other reasons. |
3
|
Fri Jul 13 20:53:35 2012 |
janosch | Optics | Characterization | two images |
The following two pictures were taken from the same angle with green (left) and red (right) incident laser at an angle of 15deg from the incident beam (reflected to about -5deg). Some scattering centers are collocated. The green laser power is about 5 times as high as the red laser power, but this factor does not seem to calibrate the image well (the green image becomes too dark dividing all pixel values by 5). So there seems to be a significant difference in the divergence of the two lasers. We will have to use a photodiode to get the calibration factor. These images were taken after cleaning the mirror. Before cleaning, there was way too much scattering and the images were mostly saturated.
 
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4
|
Tue Jul 17 18:32:11 2012 |
janosch | Optics | Characterization | purple images |
We have the new 405nm laser pointer. The image to the left shows the scattered light from the red laser, the image to the right scattered light from the purple laser. Both images were taken 30deg with respect to the normal of the mirror surface. Also, we got a new gallon of Methanol. After cleaning the mirror multiple times, the scattered light became significantly weaker. So the purple images look very different from red and green. It could be that the lens that we use to image the mirror surface is the problem since it is specified for the wavelength range 1000nm-1550nm. Could it also be the CCD camera? Anyway, to be sure I will order another broadband lens.
 
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5
|
Wed Jul 18 18:43:34 2012 |
janosch | Optics | Characterization | gone with the wind |
Here a little purple video. It starts with scattering angle around 15deg and stops at about 80deg.
There are some clear point defects visible especially at small angles.
I will not start to think about some other interesting details of this video before I got the new lens.
Ed: The AVI did not run on Mac. I posted it on youtube. Koji
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Attachment 1: Purple.avi
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6
|
Fri Jul 20 18:35:42 2012 |
janosch | Optics | Characterization | purple improvements and first uncalibrated BSDF curves |
Today we improved alignment of the lens-camera arm. We discovered earlier that this alignment affects the amount of "snowfall" on the scattering images. Looking at the latest 405nm video (see attachment), one can still see snowfall, but it is considerably weaker now and the true scatter image is clearly visible. We took a set of scatter images at certain scattering angles and produced BSDF curves. The shape of these curves has partially to do with the snowfall contribution, but one also has to keep in mind that the mirror quality is much worse than what has been used in the Fullerton measurement. We still need to calibrate these curves. The calibration factor is different for the two images so that you cannot even compare them at the moment except for their shape.
 
Today we also got the new broadband lens for the camera arm. First measurements show that image quality is better. Playing a bit around with distances between object mirror, lens and image plane, we also found that image quality becomes better when the lens and camera get closer to the mirror (which is only an issue for the 405nm measurement since 633nm and 532nm look very good anyway). So we are thinking to change the camera arm setup to make it much shorter. |
Attachment 1: Purple.mp4
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Attachment 2: Red.mp4
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7
|
Tue Jul 24 10:59:59 2012 |
janosch | Optics | Characterization | sum of purple and red |
We played around with Matlab today. The first step was to convert light wavelengths into RGB colors. In this way we can combine images taken at different colors. The picture shows the purple and red images (stored in gray scale) in heat colormap. Then the sum of these two images is calculated in their natural RGB colors.

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8
|
Fri Oct 12 16:23:20 2012 |
janosch | Optics | Daily Progress | reassembled setup |
Nothing has happened since Steve, the visiting highschool teacher, has left. Meanwhile, some parts of the multi-color BRDF setup were delivered. I assembled everything today and realigned the lasers. Everything is ready now for a three-color BRDF measurement (the previous Richter record was 2 colors). I will claim back my video capture device as soon as possible from my neighbors and then take new images. |
16
|
Fri May 20 15:18:58 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Design | Optical levers layout |
Attached a first layout of the optical lever systems. The beam spot radius on the QPD is about 0.8 mm, and the lever arm length is of the orer of 1.4-1.5 m for all four beams.
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Attachment 1: crime_v1.pdf
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17
|
Sun May 22 23:40:45 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Design | Optical levers layout |
An improved design is attached. I modified the input telescope to avoid using shor focal length lenses, to make it less critical, and to reduce the beam spot radius at the QPD to 0.5 mm.
Quote: |
Attached a first layout of the optical lever systems. The beam spot radius on the QPD is about 0.8 mm, and the lever arm length is of the orer of 1.4-1.5 m for all four beams.
|
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Attachment 1: crime_v1.pdf
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23
|
Thu Jun 16 00:47:42 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Quality factor measurement of a Mark Optics disk at LMA |
[Massimo Granata (LMA), Quentin Cassar (LMA), Gabriele]
This week I'm visiting LMA to learn how their Gentle Nodal Suspension system works and to measure the quality factors (Q) of one of Mark Optics disks. First of all we annealed the disk for 9 hours at 900 degrees (plus 9 hours warm up and 9 hours cool down).

Then we installed the disk into the measurement system and started by searching for all the resonances.

My COMSOL simulation proved to be good enough to give us the frequencies, especiallty after a small fine tuning of the disk thickness (within specs). We identifies a total of 32 modes of different families, and measured the ring down of all of them. Since our disk has no flats, each mode is actually a doublet with very small frequency separation. The analysis software has a bandwith of 1 Hz to find the peak amplitude, so it can't resolve the two modes. When both are excited to a significant amplitude by the electrostatic actuator, we see a clear beat in the ring-down. I had to write a new fitting code to take this into account. More details will follow in a DCC document. However, here I can say that the fit works remarkably well for all modes.
A couple of examples:
 
Here is a summary plot of the quality factor and loss angle for all modes. We measured Q as high as 10e6, in line with other LMA samples (2") we tested in these days. In conclusion, the Mark Optics disks, as they are, are good enough for our coating tests.

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51
|
Mon Jul 18 18:05:46 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Optical setup |
Small modifications to the optical setup:
- added a 1m focal lenght lens (AR coated for 1064nm...) right before the beam enters the viewport, to reduce the beam spot size on the QPD
- added a 0.3 ND right after the laser, to avoid saturation of the QPD (about 75 microwatts total on the QPD)
 
|
60
|
Mon Jul 25 15:35:31 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Characterization | Calibration of the QPD in physical units |
I measured the properties of the beam on the QPD. The total power is 31 uW. The beam shape is not gaussian, since we are seeing the interference of the reflection from the two surfaces:

The X and Y diameters are 1400 and 1300 microns, so I take the average of the two as an estimate of the beam size: 1300 +- 100 um. I also estimated the lever arm length to be 1.03 +- 0.02 m.
This allows me to esitmate the response of the normalized QPD signal to a tilt of the disk surface:

Plugging in the numbers gives a gain of (1900 +- 300) /rad for the normalized signals. I implemented those numbers in the filter banks: now X_NORM and Y_NORM have units of radians, and measure the disk surface angular motion. I also calibrated the SUM channel in microwatts, using the nominal responsivity of 0.45 A/W and the transimpedance of 200k (gain 11.1 uW/V)
Here's teh calibrated spectrum: note that the background noise is much larger than the real one because of the signal jumps.

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Attachment 1: crime_beam.PNG
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Attachment 2: crime_beam.PNG
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91
|
Fri Aug 19 19:05:01 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Disk installed into the chamber |
I assembled the disk suspension sytem and installed into the chamber. Although I don't have the magnets and coils, I installed the movable retaining disk, and used it to center the disk.
  
  
 
 
I first aligned the input laser using the reflection off the black glass, which turns out to be quite bright and very well visible. Tomorrow I'm going to measure how much power we have in the black glass.
The reflection from the disk is slighlty separated from the reflection from the black glass, so I can block it using an iris.
At 6:50pm I closed the chamber and started the roughing pump. At 7:05pm pressure was below 1 Tor so I started the turbo pump. When leaving pressure is about 1.6e-5 Tor. |
95
|
Sun Aug 21 13:45:56 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Wierd behavior of ring downs and Improved setup |
The last two ring downs I measured today showed a weird behavior of the lowest modes:
 
Although I'm not 100% sure, I suspect this is related to the fact that the beam reflected from the black glass was so close to the beam reflected by the disk that I could see interference.

So I broke vacuum and improved the setup, adding a peek washer below one edge of the black glass, to wedge it. In this way the reflection from the black glass is largely separated: it misses the upper periscope mirror and it is dumped on a black panel (together with the viewport reflection).
 
I realigned everything, installed back the disk and started pumping down at 1:30pm. |
101
|
Mon Aug 22 16:59:13 2016 |
Gabriele, Alastair | Optics | Daily Progress | Laser polishing of the disk edges |
We set up a test facility for laser polishing the disk edges, using the CO2 laser in the TCS laboratory. We focused the beam with a 10" focal length lens, and installed the disk on a "rotation stage" that we motorized with a hand drill. We used a HeNe optical lever and a small container with water to define the horizontal plane and adjusted the disk as well as we could.
 
We first tested the procedure on the MO02 disk, which is the one already scared with the electrostatic drive burn mark. This disk is now definitely in bad shape. However, we felt confident in our procedure, so we took out the MO03 disk that was into the measurement system and proceeded to laser polish the edges. Things went quite smothly. Unfortunately we added some small damages to the disk surface in a couple of spots where the CO2 laser went out of alignment and melted the fused silica support of the disk. The edge however looks quite good now.
Q measurement is on-going at the timw of writing |
105
|
Thu Sep 1 02:13:33 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Characterization | Expected frequencies for the 75 mm disks with flats |
Here are the nominal parameters of the disk with flats
Parameter |
Value |
Diameter (nominal) |
75.0 mm |
Thickness (nominal) |
1.00 mm |
Distance of flats from center of disk
(as measured by MO) |
36.05 mm |
Young's modulus (from G1601850) |
72.3 GPa |
Poisson's ratio (from G1601850) |
0.164 |
Density |
2202 kg/m^3 |
A COMSOL simulation gives the frequencies and mode shapes shown in the attached PDF file. Following the list of frequencies and a classification of the mode family (numer of radial nodes, number of azimuthal nodes in a half turn):
Frequency [Hz] |
Radial |
Azimuthal |
1089.7 |
0 |
2 |
1109.1 |
0 |
2 |
1661.1 |
1 |
0 |
2501.3 |
0 |
3 |
2542.3 |
0 |
3 |
3837.7 |
1 |
1 |
3909.8 |
1 |
1 |
4359.9 |
0 |
4 |
4421.2 |
0 |
4 |
6656 |
0 |
5 |
6665.3 |
1 |
2 |
6732.7 |
0 |
5 |
6780 |
1 |
2 |
7283.9 |
2 |
0 |
9381.5 |
0 |
6 |
9470.6 |
0 |
6 |
10054.1 |
1 |
3 |
10210.2 |
1 |
3 |
11244.2 |
2 |
1 |
11414.2 |
2 |
1 |
12528.4 |
0 |
7 |
12655.4 |
0 |
7 |
13970.1 |
1 |
4 |
14148.9 |
1 |
4 |
15854.8 |
2 |
2 |
15856.8 |
2 |
2 |
16101.1 |
0 |
8 |
16227.8 |
3 |
0 |
16853.9 |
3 |
0 |
18387.2 |
1 |
5 |
18562.6 |
1 |
5 |
19984.9 |
0 |
9 |
20045.8 |
0 |
9 |
21067.2 |
2 |
3 |
21358.1 |
2 |
3 |
22300.9 |
3 |
1 |
22848.8 |
3 |
1 |
23270.5 |
1 |
6 |
23419.4 |
1 |
6 |
24374.1 |
0 |
10 |
24425.2 |
0 |
10 |
26793.8 |
2 |
4 |
27083.9 |
2 |
4 |
28533.5 |
1 |
7 |
28637.8 |
1 |
7 |
28692 |
3 |
2 |
28998.5 |
4 |
0 |
29228.3 |
0 |
11 |
29271.9 |
0 |
11 |
29870.1 |
4 |
0 |
33040 |
2 |
5 |
33301.4 |
2 |
5 |
33949.1 |
0 |
12 |
33986.5 |
0 |
12 |
|
Attachment 1: allmodes_aggregated.pdf
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|
116
|
Tue Sep 20 15:34:00 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Improved optical lever layout |
Goal
Improve the optical setup, by increasing the response of the QPD to disk motion.
The old configuration
In all my previous measurement the optical lever was as simple as possible: no lenses were used, and therefore the beam was free to expand over all its path. The estimated arm lever from the disk to the QPD was 1030 mm.
QPD response to disk angular motion
The response of the QPD can be characterized with its optical gain in 1/rad, which is how much the normalized signal (difference / sum) changes for one radians of motion of the disk. This is the product of two parts:
- the gain from angular motion of the disk to beam spot motion on the QPD. In the simple case of free propagation this is 2L, where L is the distance from the disk to the QPD, and the factor 2 is due to the fact that the beam deflection is the double of the disk angular motion. If there is a telescope in between the disk and the QPD, it is easy to compute the total ray transfer matrix:

Then the gain is simply the B element of the matrix.
- the response of the QPD normalized signal to beam motion. This depends only on the beam spot radius w on the QPD. It can be computed by simple gaussian integration, and in the approximation of small beam motion, it is given by the following expression:

In the case of the old configuration, the beam spot size on the QPD was measured to be about 1.5 mm in radius, so the optical gain is of the order of 1900 /rad.
Laser beam profiling
Since I wanted to improve the optical setup, I first needed to measure the beam coming out of the HeNe laser. I used the WinCam beam profile and a Newport rail to measure the beam X and Y sizes at different positions.

The measurements are not the best ever, but I can still get a fit for the evolution of the gaussian beam, as shown in the plot below. The beam waist is 254 um, located 340 mm behind the laser output (inside the laser tube).

Design of the improved setup
I decided to try a brute force algorithmic optimization for the optical gain. I allow two lenses between the laser and the disk and two lenses between the disk and the QPD. I wrote a MATLAB script that picks the four lenses from a list of all those available (I have a Thorlabs LSB02-A lens kit). For each combination of lenses, MATLAB moves them around into pre-defined ranges, and try to find the maximum value of the QPD total optical gain, which is the product of the factor g above and of the B element of the ray tracing matrix.
It turned out that the best optical gains could almost always be obtained by making the beam huge on the disk (5-10 mm radius) and tiny on the QPD (tens of microns). This is not a good solution. So I decided that the beam on the disk must be smaller than 2mm in radius and the beam on the QPD must be larger than 200 microns. I enforced those limits into the optimization code by weighting the gain with a function which is one in the allowed range, and then quickly drops to zero when either of the beam sizes fall out of the allowed range.
The script ran for about half hour and gave me a lot of possible options. After some inspections, I decided to use the following one, which uses only one lens between laser and disk, and two between the disk and the QPD. Distances and focal lengths are shown below. Note that the first distance (laser to first lens) is from the laser beam waist to the lens, so the actual distance must take into account that the waist is estimated to be 340mm into the laser.

With this configuration the optical gain is computed to be 17000 /rad, or about 9 times larger than the original setup. The beam radius on the disk is 1 mm and on the QPD is 0.23 mm.
Implementation
First of all I measured some distances:
- from the inner side of the viewport to the disk: 420 mm
- viewport thickness: 12 mm, which is about 18 mm optical length considering n~1.5
- so from the input to the chamber to the disk: 438 mm
- from the viewport to the upper external periscope mirror center: 110 mm
- distance between the periscope mirror centers: 275 mm
Using these distanced I build the designed optical setup. Some remarks on the procedure
- I first aligned the laser beam to be horizontal, then added the first lens and centered it by ensuring no beam shift far away from the lens
- I first aligned the periscope to get the beam roughly centered on the inner 45 degrees mirror, and then roughly centered on the black glass
- Then I put a small container with water inside the chamber, on top of the black glass. I aligned the inner mirror and the periscope so that the beam coming back from the horizontal water surface was perfectly overlapped with the input beam. I used an iris on the input beam path
- Then I removed the water container and installed a test disk. I moved the disk around until I got the same beam position in output. This tells me that the disk is horizontal
- Finally I moved the upper periscope mirror to separate horizontally the beam coming back, at the level of the table. The separation is large enough to allow me to pick up the outgoing beam with a mirror.
Here's a picture of the setup, with the optical path highlighted.

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122
|
Thu Sep 22 13:39:40 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Configuration | Updated design for the new C.Ri.Me. setup |
Today I measured the amount of space available on the table for the new (4-fold) C.Ri.Me. setup. It's 1050 x 1220 mm, with the table hole in it.
So I updated the optical layout to fit into this space, and optimized the telescope to have a beam spot on the QPD of the order of 350 um. The average lever arm length is 1.5 m, so the optical gain will be about 7000 /rad.
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Attachment 1: crime_v2.pdf
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127
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Mon Sep 26 15:59:09 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | QPD auto centering |
We have a few motorized mounts (with New Focus picomotors) and one controller (an old New Focus 8753, six axis total) that I connected with a makeshift null modem cable to the laboratory workstation (better cabling and power supply coming soon).
 
I wrote a couple of python scripts that can be used to continuosly read out the QPD values and move the picomotors if needed. It's wortking quite well, so we should be able to use it in the future to keep the QPD centered during the measurement.
The scripts are in the ~/CRIME directory. Launch the function center() in the autocenter.py script.

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132
|
Thu Sep 29 15:40:45 2016 |
Gabriele | Optics | Design | Beam profile of new 21mW HeNe laser and tweak of optical lever design |
I measured the beam profile of the new Thorlabs HeNe (21.8 mW measured). The beam waist is 355 microns, very close to the laser output port.

Using those numbers and the optical gain optimization algorithm, I tweaked the optical lever design. The simplest solution uses two lenses right after the laser to focus the beam down to about 300 microns on the QPD. The arm lever length is about 1.6 m, corresponding to an optical gain of about 18000/rad. I updated the DCC drawing in D1600213 |
270
|
Fri Jan 20 17:20:20 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Input part of the optical lever setup installed and aligned |
Today I installed and aligned part of the optical components for the optical lever of the new setup. For the moment being I installed only the input components, and aligned the beams into the vacuum chamber. Since I don't have any in-vacuum optics yet, there's nothing more that can be done now.

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272
|
Mon Jan 23 16:29:52 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Input part of the optical lever setup installed and aligned |
Today I cabled and installed the four QPD, in a temporary position. I also assembled four picomotor mounts that will be used for the auto-centering.
Quote: |
Today I installed and aligned part of the optical components for the optical lever of the new setup. For the moment being I installed only the input components, and aligned the beams into the vacuum chamber. Since I don't have any in-vacuum optics yet, there's nothing more that can be done now.
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280
|
Fri Jan 27 14:56:55 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Optical lever setup completed |
The four optical levers are completely installed and aligned to a horizontal reference.
 
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287
|
Wed Feb 1 15:23:42 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Noise hunting | Wandering line is due to the laser |
The wandering line I mentioned in my previous elog, which is spoiling most of the sensitivity, turns out to be power noise of the laser.
I used a Thorlabs PDA100 and a SR785 to measure the power noise out of the laser directly, and saw a huge forest of peaks above 20kHz. Among them, a couple of peaks are moving up and down in frequency very fast. The plot below compares two different times of the Thorlabs HNL210L laser (the new one, 21 mW) with the old JTSU laser we are using for the test setup:

The noise of the new laser is cleary much larger (even after the laser has been on for some time) and non stationary. This is a big issue for us. I will contact Thorlabs to inquire if this behavior is normal.
The attached video file shows the peaks dancing around on the SR785 screen. |
Attachment 2: Untitled.avi
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291
|
Mon Feb 6 11:19:13 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Laser swap |
The Thorlabs laser has been misbehaving for the whole weekend. Even after many days being continuosly on, the wandering line is still moving all over the frequencies.
So this morning I swapped in a JDSU 1125P borrowed from the 40m lab, which provides about 6.8 mW of power. I tested it over the weekend on a separate test table, and after one day or so of operation the power looks reasonably stable. Now it's been on for a few hours: there is still a line moving around, but it's slowing down and hopefully setting down in a good place.
I started a series of test measurements on the samples that were already installed.
- Quiet time before excitation: 1170443490
Excitation (broad band) at 1170443523 (60 s)
Quiet time after excitation: 1170443586
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295
|
Tue Feb 7 16:16:37 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Lasers |
The high power lasers I tested so far (the Thorlabs 21mW and the JDSU 1125P) are noisy: they both have wandering lines that from time to time are alised down into the base band, destroing the measurement.
I have three JDSU 1103P units: two of them dlived about 2.5 mW, the third one delivers about 1.4 mW. One of the 2.5mW was installed in the test setup. I swapped it out with the 1.4 mW, so now I have two good 2.5 mW laser. My plan is to modify the new setup to use those two lasers in parallel, splitting each one in two, for a total of four beams of about 1.2 mW each.
The new optical layout is atttached. |
Attachment 1: crime_v3.pdf
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296
|
Wed Feb 8 17:01:01 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Two laser installed, setup aligned |
Today I swapped out the 8mW laser and installed two 2.5 mW lasers. I rebuilt the input part of the optical levers and re-aligned everything. See below for a picture of the new setup: red beams are input, yellow beams are output. I also installed a protective screen all around the table, to abvoid any suprios beam to get out.

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300
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Thu Feb 9 09:30:52 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Two laser installed, setup aligned |
The lasers are behaving well, there is no high noise or wandering lines. The spectrum below is taken in air: that explains the excess of noise in the few kHz region.

Quote: |
Today I swapped out the 8mW laser and installed two 2.5 mW lasers. I rebuilt the input part of the optical levers and re-aligned everything. See below for a picture of the new setup: red beams are input, yellow beams are output. I also installed a protective screen all around the table, to abvoid any suprios beam to get out.

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301
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Thu Feb 9 11:35:27 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Configuration | QPD calibration |
This morning I measured the beam profiles at the QPD positions. As expected, the beams are not gaussian there, since we are seeing the interference of the reflections from the two faces of the disks. Nevertheless, the measured sizes are
|
Beam radius [microns] |
QPD1 |
302 |
QPD2 |
338 |
QPD3 |
270 |
QPD4 |
401 |
Here are the images of the beams:
 
 
The arm lever lengths (distance from the disk surface to the QPD) can be estimated from the optical drawing:
|
Distance disk to QPD [mm] |
QPD1 |
1540 |
QPD2 |
1813 |
QPD3 |
1587 |
QPD4 |
1652 |
The optical gain (normalized QPD signal over disk surface angle) is given by

|
Gain 1/rad |
QPD1 |
16300 |
QPD2 |
17100 |
QPD3 |
18800 |
QPD4 |
13150 |
The uncertaint in those numbers is quite large, both from the beam size and from the arm lever. Anyhow, I'm using the average to have a rough calibration of the QPD signals in terms of disk surface angular motion. The value I plugged in into the X_NORM filter banks is 16300 /rad. Therefore now the signals *NORM_OUT_DQ are calibrated in radians (deflection of the disk surface).

Finally, I also measured the profiles of the beams going into the chamber, somewhere before the 2" folding mirror. They have nice gaussian shapes
 
 
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Attachment 1: qpd1.bmp
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Attachment 9: IN3.png
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Fri Feb 17 13:44:47 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Swapped picomotor and re-alignment |
Since I had recurrent problems with the picomotors used for QPD3, I swapped them with another Newport motorized mirror that was previously used in the Crackle1 experiment. This is the same model used for the other three QPD centering. Everything looks to be working fine now.
I also realigned all optical levers and swapped out an iris with a smaller one, to avoid beam clipping. All beam paths look clear now. |
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Fri Mar 10 16:44:13 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | Updated in vacuum periscope of CR0 |
This afternoon I removed the old periscope from CR0 and installed a new one with finely adjustable mount, like those in the new chamber. I realigned the optical lever to the horizontal refererence. |
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Thu Mar 30 15:23:44 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | General | Swapped HeNe laser in CR0 |
The JDSU HeNe laser 1103P that I was using is dead. I swapped it with a JDSU 1125P borrowed from the 40m. |
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Fri Apr 7 16:19:03 2017 |
Gabriele | Optics | Daily Progress | New 1103P laser installed |
This afternoon I installed the new Lumentum (former JDSU) HeNe laser, model 1103P in CR0.
Realigned everything.
I installed a sample in the chamber to reflect a beam back inot the QPD. Checking the QPD signals over a hour and more did not show any sign of excess noise or instability. |
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Tue Jan 30 09:19:09 2018 |
Gabriele | Optics | Configuration | Setup for 50mm disks |
I realigned all optical levers to measure the 50mm disks. In brief, I moved the input 2" mirrors, the in-vacuum 2" mirrors and the PZT mirrors so that the beam hits the 50mm sample and gets back into the QPD. Re-aligned everything to the horizontal reference using water. |
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Tue Feb 13 16:28:49 2018 |
Gabriele | Optics | Configuration | Setup resigned for 75mm disks |
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Thu Mar 8 09:40:10 2018 |
Gabriele | Optics | Configuration | Realigned all optical levers to horizontal reference |
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Tue Mar 27 16:36:49 2018 |
Gabriele | Optics | Configuration | Optical levers re-aligned for 50mm substrates |
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Fri Apr 12 09:36:54 2019 |
Gabriele | Optics | Configuration | Realignment |
I realigned the entire CR1-4 setup
- ensured that beam out of the chamber are at 6" height everywhere. Moved some iris to center them
- ensured that the beam hits the 45 degrees in-vacuum mirrors at a height of 3.78" = 96 mm
- checked that all incoming beams are roughly centered on the 45 degrees in-vacuum mirrors. Move some of them in-vacuum mirror posts
- realigned the input steering mirros horizontally and the in-vacuum mirros so that the beams reflected from a water-level are not clippe anywhere
- realigned the horizontal reference to the center of all QPDs
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Thu May 19 11:36:04 2016 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Design | A first design of the disk assembly |
Here are some screenshots of the disk assembly and a look at how four of them will sit into the vacuum chamber. The Solidworks models are available here: D1600197
   
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Attachment 3: Screen_Shot_2016-05-18_at_3.41.25_PM.png
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Fri May 27 02:09:37 2016 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Characterization | Lowest usable mode of fused silica disks |
I did some FEA simulation of fused silica disks, to identify the lowest usable eigenmode. By usable I mean a mode that has zero elastic energy stored in the center.
Diameter |
Thickness |
Frequency |
75 mm |
1 mm |
2500 Hz |
100 mm |
0.4 mm |
564 Hz |
200 mm |
0.4 mm |
141 Hz |
75 mm |
0.12 mm |
293 Hz |
In the attached figures, the dfisk deformation is shown exaggerated, and the color map shows the elastic energy density. All results are obtained with COMSOL/MATLAB, the disk are constrained at a point corresponding to the center of the lower surface. No gravity. |
Attachment 1: disk_75mm_0.12mm.png
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Attachment 2: disk_75mm_1mm.png
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Attachment 3: disk_100mm_0.4mm.png
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Attachment 4: disk_200mm_0.4mm.png
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Wed Aug 10 10:04:35 2016 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Daily Progress | The prototype of the disk retain system is here |
Yesterday we received the prototype of the disk suspension and retain system. Everything looks good. I checked that the disk fits in the holder, and all dimensions are good. The coil holders are out for winding, so I couldn't test the movimentation yet.
 
 
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Attachment 3: 2016-08-09_14.18.55.jpg
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Attachment 4: 2016-08-09_14.19.02.jpg
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Fri Sep 23 08:11:48 2016 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Daily Progress | Test of the disk retaining ring motion |
In brief, it doesn't work. The magnets and coils are strong enough to push up the ring with a sample inside, but the friction with the three alignment pins is too large and random, so when the current to the coils is increased slowly, the ring doesn't move up smoothly (see first attached video). On the other hand, if the current is switched on abruptly, the ring shoot to the top and stays there. However, if a disk is placed on the support, it is ejected out (see second video). When the current is cut (smoothly or abruptly) the ring doesn't alway comes back to the bottom, but sometimes it stays stuck inclinded.
On the positive side, we probably don't need such a complicated system:
- in all the pump down I've done so far (ten or more), the disk never moved
- the ring is very useful, even when used manually, to find the initial centering of the disk: if we machine three small aluminum wedges that can be put under the ring to keep it raised (or three set screws), it can be used to place down the sample in a roughly centered position, that has always been good enough to get the beam almost back into the QPD.
Links to the two videos:
Video1 Video2 |
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Tue Nov 15 10:35:11 2016 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Daily Progress | Parts for laser polishing setup are here |
The parts all fit as expected. They're mounted on the stages.
  
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Thu Jan 19 14:16:53 2017 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Design | New concept for retaining ring motion |
Since my experiment with coil and magnets didn't work out very well, here's a new concept for the motion of the four retaining rings (all together) using a translation stage and a picomotor. This follows the same idea put forward by Steve Penn. The translation stage is a Newport 9066-COM-V and the picomotor (which we already have) is a Newport 8301-V. Both stage and picomotor are vacuum compatible (rated at 1e-6 Torr) and tested down to 1e-8 Torr by Steve.
  
Here's the jig integrated in the full system:

 
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Tue Jan 31 11:21:44 2017 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Daily Progress | Retaining ring mechanics |
All parts for the motion of the retaining rings have been received and are ok. We're going to clean and bake them.
 
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Fri Feb 10 17:16:28 2017 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Daily Progress | Translation stage to move retaining rings |
This afternoon I installed the picomotor and the translation stage that will be used to move the retaining rings up and down. No partciular problem: I only had to add some small aluminum foil shims between the ear of some rings and the square plate, to make the rings as horizontal as possible.
I tested the motion: with 300000 steps it's possible to move the rings all the way from the parked (down) position, to the up position. I also checked that when the rings are up, I can place four substarates and they fall properly into the alignment groove. Since the maximum speed of the picomotor is 2000 steps/s, it takes 150 seconds to move up and down the ring.
Finally, positive steps means that the rings are moving up, negative that they're moving down.
I raeligned the optical levers to the position I obtained by centering the samples with the rings. I haven't tested the repeatability yet.
 
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Sat Feb 11 16:22:26 2017 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Daily Progress | Translation stage to move retaining rings |
The ring motion up and down was not very smooth, again due to friction on the centering pins.
So, after centering the rings using the pins and securing the rings to the translation stage, I removed all pins.
Now the motion up and down is very smooth.
I still have to fine tune the amount of steps that are needed to go up and down.
However, initial tests don't show a good repeatability of the positioning. My main suspect is that the vibration caused by the picomotor cause the disks to slip on the silicon lens. Indeed, when the disks are sitting on the rings, one can clearly hear them "rattle".
Quote: |
This afternoon I installed the picomotor and the translation stage that will be used to move the retaining rings up and down. No partciular problem: I only had to add some small aluminum foil shims between the ear of some rings and the square plate, to make the rings as horizontal as possible.
I tested the motion: with 300000 steps it's possible to move the rings all the way from the parked (down) position, to the up position. I also checked that when the rings are up, I can place four substarates and they fall properly into the alignment groove. Since the maximum speed of the picomotor is 2000 steps/s, it takes 150 seconds to move up and down the ring.
Finally, positive steps means that the rings are moving up, negative that they're moving down.
I raeligned the optical levers to the position I obtained by centering the samples with the rings. I haven't tested the repeatability yet.
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Thu Aug 10 13:36:08 2017 |
Gabriele, Zach | Mechanics | Configuration | ESD moved closer to disk in CR0 |
We first measured the distance of the ESD from the disk in the test chamber (CR0). We had to remove the retaining ring to have reliable measurements
- distance between top of the ESD and mounting plate: 12.30 mm
- distance between top of the disk and mounting plate: 10.53 mm
- ESD thickness: 0.55 mm
So initially the distance between disk and ESD is 1.22 mm
We re-aligned the optical setup to a horizontal reference, and moved down the ESD as much as we could. It's not completely clear if the ESD is touching the disk. We'll see after pump down. The new distance from the top of the ESD to the mounting plate is about 11.80 mm, so we should have moved the ESD 0.5mm closer to the disk.
Pump down started at ~1:30pm
Excitations
- Old configuration, 1.2mm distance ESD-disk:
- GPS before exc. 1186417492
- GPS after exc. 1186417546
- New configuration, 0.7mm distance ESD-disk
- GPS before exc.
- GPS after exc.
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Fri Aug 11 09:22:21 2017 |
Gabriele | Mechanics | Configuration | ESD moved closer to disk in CR0 |
The plots below compare the SNR and peak amplitude of all excited modes, in the new and old configuration. The new confgiuration is worse than the old one. This is unexpected, since the distance between ESD and disk is smaller.
However, yesterday we found out that setting the ESD so close to the disk is very tricky, and we might have some touching.
Additionally, the measured Q values of all modes are signfiicantly lower (by factors of >3), so it seems there is some additional friction. The mode frequencies are still compatible with the expected values, so it's unlikely that the ESD is touching the disk. One possible explanation for the worse Q can be residual gas damping in the area between the ESD and the disk: basically the gas moelcules that are left in the enclosed region between disk and ESD can create a viscous damping, which gets larger when the distance gets smaller [PhysRevLett.103.140601, arxiv:0907.5375]. I'll try to do some computations later today.
 
Quote: |
We first measured the distance of the ESD from the disk in the test chamber (CR0). We had to remove the retaining ring to have reliable measurements
- distance between top of the ESD and mounting plate: 12.30 mm
- distance between top of the disk and mounting plate: 10.53 mm
- ESD thickness: 0.55 mm
So initially the distance between disk and ESD is 1.22 mm
We re-aligned the optical setup to a horizontal reference, and moved down the ESD as much as we could. It's not completely clear if the ESD is touching the disk. We'll see after pump down. The new distance from the top of the ESD to the mounting plate is about 11.80 mm, so we should have moved the ESD 0.5mm closer to the disk.
Pump down started at ~1:30pm
Excitations
- Old configuration, 1.2mm distance ESD-disk:
- GPS before exc. 1186417492
- GPS after exc. 1186417546
- New configuration, 0.7mm distance ESD-disk
- GPS before exc.
- GPS after exc.
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