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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Elogs for the new Coatin RIng-down MEasurement lab had to start somewhere, so here is a couple of pictures of the optical table with shorter legs and of one of the two vacuum chambers that have been moved in.

We discovered a couple of days ago that the table was sitting on three legs only and the fourth one was dangling. I managed to adjust the height of the fourth leg using the large screw on the leg support. Now the table is properly supported by all four legs.

For the optical levers we are going to use the same QPD that are used in aLIGO optical levers (see T1600085 and D1100290): Hamamatsu S5981

Based on the aLIGO design, I put together a design fof the QPD boards, see the first attached PDF file. Some comments:

• I'm using a quad opamp to implement the transimpendance and a doubel stage of whitening for the readout of each quadrant. I haven't decided yet which is the right whitening
• The bias to the QPD is just coming from the +15V with a capacitor to ground, as in the aLIGO setup. However, I allowed the possibility of supplying a lower noise bias if needed, by removing R0 and connecting an external circuit
• There is no sum or difference computation, each quadrant is sent directly to the ADC with a differential driver (DRV135)
• Each board hosts one QPD, and it is interfaced with a 14 pin header (we're going to use twisted cables for the signals)

The stable power supply will be provided by an additional board, which will also interface 8 QPD boards to the ADC connector, see the second attached PDF. The ADC signal grounds can be connected directly to the power supply ground, left floating, or connected with a RC filter, depending on what we find to be the best solution.

Total cost estimated for PCB manufacturing and components, including the QPDs is less than 3k$, for a total of 12 boards (we need 8, plus some spares)

Koji, Rich, and I recently came up with a new QPD design which is better for general lab use than the aLIGO ones (which have a high-noise preamp copied from iLIGO). 

https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-D1500467

This page has the mechanical drawing only, but perhaps Rich can tell us if he's ready to make the first version for you or not. I think you can get by with the old design, but this new one should be lower noise for low light levels.

After a very useful discussion with Rich this morning, I think the circuit based on aLIGO optical levers design should be good for our applications.

It uses a LT1125 as input stage, which has

• (maximum) current noise of 1e-12 A/rHz @ 100 Hz and 0.4e-12 A/rHz @ 1 kHz
• (maximum) voltage noise of 4e-9 V/rHz @ >100 Hz

We expect to send about 5 mW into the disk, getting back a 4% reflection, which would correspond to 200 uW on the QPD. Let's say we lose half of this power in reflections through viewports and such, so we have a total of 100 uW on the QPD, or 25 uW on each quadrant. From the QPD datasheet the repsonse is about 0.4 A/W, so we have a photocurrent of 10 uA. The corresponding shot noise limit is about 1.8e-12 A/rHz.

Using a transimpendace of 200k, the noise at the output of the transimpendance is

• shot noise = 3.6e-7 V/rHz
• voltage noise = 4e-9 V/rHz
• current noise = 2e-7 V/rHz @ 100 Hz, 0.8e-7 V/rHz @ 1 kHz

So in the worst case the current noise will be about half of the shot noise. This seems good enough.

The circuit design sent out for fabrication is available in the DCC: D1600196

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

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.

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.

A preliminary design of the ESD board is available on the DCC: D1600214

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. 

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.

The PCBs for the QPD circuit and ADC interface are here and look ok. All electronics components are also here (except for the ADC connector which should be ordered separately from Mouser, after confirming that the ADC we're going to use have the same cable as the one we use in the Crackling Noise experiment). The QPD will be shipped on 06/17.

I moved the unused rack from the Crackling Noise lab to the C.Ri.Me lab. It will be used for the new cymac. I also started putting the new workstation together, but I'm missing some adaptors for the monitors.

Instructions on how to setup a workstation are available here:

https://nodus.ligo.caltech.edu:8081/Cryo_Lab/1135

I'll copy them here and integrate once I got the C.Ri.Me. workstation up and running

** libmotif4 >> libxm4 : sudo apt-get install libxm4

** all .sh files in etc must be modified to point to the correct version of the downloaded software

** add the following line to the end of the ligoapps-userv-end.sh file to get medm and striptool working

PATH="/ligo/apps/ubuntu12/epics-3.14.12.3_long/extensions/bin/linux-x86_64:$PATH"

** to fix diaggui problem, create a symbolic link in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

sudo ln -s libtiff.so.5 libtiff.so.4

[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.

Between yesterday and today I populated one QPD board (based on D1600196), and started testing it. The transimpedance stages seems to work fine (they show about 5-6 V in ambient light). However the whitening stages show a large ~100 kHz oscillation. While trying to fix it I probably burnt one of the output drivers.

I'll continue the investigations and debugging on Monday.

Transimpendance and whitening are working properly. I can't get useful signal out of the differential stages yet. I replaced the channel 1 DRV134 that was burnt (very hot when powered on). But the new one got hot too after powring on, so there might be something else wrong there. I'm also wondering if it's ok to use an oscilloscope to look at the differential stage output. The scope will ground one of the two outputs: according to the DRV134 datasheet this should be ok, but I'll check better later on.

The following table shows the lowest eigenfrequency (Hz) for different sizes of disks

Today I gave up trying to fix the first board I populated, and built a second one. The good news is that it's working as expected.

With 27.5 uW incident on each quadrant, I measure about 4.5 V, which is in line with the transimpedance of 200k, a responsivity of about 0.4 A/W and ad additional gain of two coming from the differential driver.

I also measured the noise with a SR785 (it wasn't connected to a GPIB interface and I couldn't find any, so all I have are the following numbers and the attached screenshots). 

At low frequency we are dominated by 60 Hz harmonics (probably coming from the laser). At high frequency there are some large peaks of unknown origin. I can't acquire digitally the signals to compute the difference, so I don't know if the noise we see is, for example, laser intensity noise. As soon as the cymac is up and running, I'll run some more tests.

I got two new ADC and DAC boards from Rolf, with the correct PCIe interface. I installed them into the cymac and checked that the system could boot. The cymac is now sitting in the rack. As requested by Jamie I installed Debian 8.5

I turned out that all the noise I was seeing in the QPD spectrum was due to ambient light. I covered the QPD with a box and switched off all the light. As shown in the following plot the noise is lower.

Considering that in the final setup we'll have a beam spot radius of 0.5mm, the sensitivity to beam motion on the QPD will be 23e6 V/m. The following plot shows the resulting beam motion sensitivity, if limited by electroninc noise:

It's at a level of 6e-15 m/rHz at all frequencies above 120 Hz.

To mitigate the issue of ambient light pulluting the QPD signal, I mounted the prototype into a custum built box. This helps a lot. My plan is to add a short piece of black pipe in the front, to further shield from incident light.

The new box also provides a clean way to mount the QPD.

[Alena, Gabriele]

This afternoon we opened the tall belljar vacuum chamber, and took everything out of it. All the stuff that was inside the chamber is "temporarily" stored on the floor beside the optical table.

We installed a "spacer" into the chamber, made from one of the optical table legs that were sitting in the hallway. We installed one of the aluminum base plates on top of it, so that the optical components will be at the level of the viewport. Another leg and a thinner base plate are installed out of the chamber, at a similar level.

After this we closed the chamber with one of the flats used for the old chamber, and a rubber o-ring. We started the roughing pump, quickly reached a pressure below 1 mTorr and switched on the turbo pump. Unfortunately, it seems that the low pressure gauge is not working properly, so we don't know what's the pressure right now. We'll check the gauge and controller tomorrow morning and swap it out if needed.

Fixed the 307 gauge controller (a missing contact on the rair panel). The low pressure gauge was connected to 1G port and has measured 1.7E-6 torr. We are not sure since how long the turbo was operating (no vacuum logger yet).

In the last days Jamie installed the patched kernel to run the real time system (RTS) on the new CyMAC. Today (with Jamie's remote advices) I managed to get a IOP (input output process) model compiled and running. There is still no timing input (to be fixed at the beginning of the netx week, I'm presently missing a connector which is on order).

Running the x1iop model gives:

controls@cymac3:/opt/rtcds/tst/x1/scripts$ ./startx1iop 

x1iopepics: no process found

Number of ADC cards on bus = 1

Number of DAC16 cards on bus = 1

Number of DAC18 cards on bus = 0

Specified filename iocX1.log does not exist.

x1iopepics X1 IOC Server started

controls@cymac3:/opt/rtcds/tst/x1/scripts$ awg_server Version $Id: awg_server.c 2917 2012-05-22 22:33:39Z alexander.ivanov@LIGO.ORG $

channel_client Version $Id: gdschannel.c 4170 2016-04-05 21:24:46Z jonathan.hanks@LIGO.ORG $

testpoint_server Version $Id: testpoint_server.c 3303 2013-03-05 23:33:45Z alexander.ivanov@LIGO.ORG $

/opt/rtcds/tst/x1/target/gds/bin/awgtpman -s x1iop -4 -l /opt/rtcds/tst/x1/target/gds/awgtpman_logs/x1iop.log started on host cymac3 hostid ffffffffd783d97b 

awgtpman Version $Id: awgtpman.c 4170 2016-04-05 21:24:46Z jonathan.hanks@LIGO.ORG $

I copy here parts of an email from Jamie with instructions on how to run the RTS on the cymac:

I had to change the site/ifo to be "caltech/x3" to avoid EPICS
collisions with other cymacs.  You'll need to update your models to
reflect this change (change names, site/ifo parameters in the model,
etc.).  So for instance, change x1iop -> x3iop, and update the params
block inside.

daqd is installed and running, although I haven't really stress tested
it yet (no models/channels/etc).  It's running under systemd, which is
the Debian service management system.  You can control daqd with the
following commands:

# systemctl restart daqd
# systemctl stop daqd
# systemctl start daqd
# systemctl status daqd
# journalctl --unit=daqd

controls@cymac3:~ 0$ systemctl status daqd
● daqd.service - Advanced LIGO RTS daqd service
  Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/daqd.service; enabled)
  Active: active (running) since Sat 2016-07-09 11:22:38 PDT; 23h ago
Main PID: 20827 (daqd-standiop)
  CGroup: /system.slice/daqd.service
          └─20827 /usr/bin/daqd-standiop -c /etc/advligorts/daqdrc
controls@cymac3:~ 0$ sudo journalctl --unit=daqd
...

Remember to restart daqd ("systemctl restart daqd") after you add/change
models.

I've gotten all the RCG components working, but not without some small
kinks.  The RCG currently expects a specific EPICS install, different
than the system install we're using right now.  I've hacked a way to
make this work seemlessly for model builds, but it requires sourcing the
following file before *starting* models:

/opt/rtapps/epics/etc/epics-user-env.sh

So in the mean time, you can start/stop models via the following:

$ . /opt/rtapps/epics/etc/epics-user-env.sh
$ /opt/rtcds/caltech/x3/scripts/startx1iop
 

Installed a gate valve between the roughing and tubbo pump. See below a pump down curve. The convection gauge is not calibrated. the turbo started at 14th min (at about 3 torr)

[Alena, Gabriele]

We attached one of the silicon lenses to a 1" optical post using some kapton tape, and installed it into the vacuum chamber. We built a simple periscope using standard optical component, and managed to send the optical level beam into the disk and back out.

To set a reference for the horizontal position of the disk we used the LMA method: we put a small container with water in place of the disk, and mark on a reference where the reflected beam hits out of the chamber:

We then put back the disk, and aligned it to have the beam hitting the same position. During pumdown we couldn't see any shift of the disk, judging from the position of the optical lever beam.

At 5pm the pressure was 6.5e-6 torr.

Checked again at:

• 9am, pressure was 2e-6 torr
• 11:30am, pressure was 1.5e-6 torr
• 5pm, pressure was 1.4e-6 torr

This afternoon I completed the assembly of the electronics boards to interface the ADC and DAC. The ADC is interfaced with a new custom board, which accepts up to eight QPD inputs, the syncronization signal, and it's connected to the ADC:

For the DAC I used one spare board from the Crackle experiment. However, that board had a wrong pinout for the DAC side connector, so I had to implemented again the same hack I did for the crackling noise experiment. 

All boards are connected to the ADC and DACs, and to the syncronization signal generated with a SR DS345. No boxes for the moment being, I'll figure out a better organization of the boards in the future if needed. I still haven't tested if the real time system is able to communicate properly with the new interfaces.

We played around a bit with the cymac, in efforts to make things better.

• We disabled some more fancy-sounding options in the machine's BIOS
• I created safe.snap files for the x3iop and x3tst models 
  • x3iop's was created by booting the model while mashing the EPICS command to set the burt restore bit, and then saving the EPICS database to file via the SDF screen
  • x3tst's was created by copying an existing .snap file 
• I gave the controls user ownership of /frames via sudo chown controls:controls /frames
• I then created the following folders (which the daqd log was complaining about not finding_
  • /frames/full
  • /frames/trend/minute
  • /frames/trend/minute_raw
  • /frames/trend/second
• I also created the folder /opt/rtcds/tst/x3/target/fb, since that is listed in the daqd config as the nds job dir. (However nds does not seem to be running. Is it needed? I couldn't compile it in the rtbuild directory)

As I see it, the main problems that persist are:

• daqd crashes over and over again every few seconds
  • The logs seem to be complaining about EPICS server problems. Is the related to whatever situation made the epics-env script neccessary?
• The IOP seems to be taking too much time: 8-9 usec
  • This is especially problematic as Gabriele actually wants to run the IOP at an even faster rate than the current 64k, which isn't possible with the current timing

Please see prosidures for pumping down and venting with air for the test vacuum chamber here https://dcc.ligo.org/T1600304

The laboratory workstation is coatings.ligo.caltech.edu

The RTS is cymac3.ligo.caltech.edu

I set up a ssh-mount of the /opt/rtcds/userapps folder in the workstation. I also created shared ssh keys for the controls user, so we can ssh into the cymac3 without password

Using the already installed high voltage feedthrough, I cabled one of the electrostatic actuators (1mm gap between electrodes) and installed it into the chamber. One of the electrodes is connected to the feedthrough cenral pin, the other is grounded on the bottom of the chamber.

The electrostatic actuator is mounted at about 1 mm above the disk, see pictures.

As a preliminary test, I checked that switching the HV amplifier on and off with about 1.5kV produces a visible motion (~2-3 mm) of the optical lever beam. So the actuator is working.

I connected the QPD to the ADC interface with a temporary cable running on the floor.

I could get signals. I still have a problem with the digital system: I can't access test points with dataviewer, but I get them with DTT. This will have to be fixed.

Following Alena's procedure, at about 1:30pm LT I started the chamber pump down. At 14:15pm LT the pressure was still 240 mTorr

At 6:20pm the pressure was about 70 mTorr, so I started the turbo pump.

Today at 1:40pm pressure is 8.5e-7 Torr

The QPD quadrants are wired accoridng to the following convention

I checked that the QPD electronics works as expected, and that I can acquire the signals using the ADCs. A new model (x3cr1) is up and running. It acquires the four quadrants, convert them from counts to volts, and compensate for the analog whitening filter. The four quadrant signals are X3:CR1-Q1_OUT, X3:CR1-Q2_OUT, X3:CR1-Q3_OUT, X3:CR1-Q4_OUT.

A matrix is used to compute the X and Y signals, defined as X = (Q1+Q4-Q2-Q3) and Y = (Q2+Q4-Q1-Q3). The SUM signal is also computed as SUM = (Q1+Q2+Q3+Q4).

Finally, the X and Y signals are normalized with the sum to produce X3:CR1-X_NORM_OUT and X3:CR2-Y_NORM_OUT.

A filter bank (ESD) is connected to the DAC channel #0 to produce the excitation that will be sent to the high voltage amplifier. I checked that the DAC is working properly (adding offsets). The input to the ESD filter bank is in volts.

The normalized X and Y signals, the sum of all four quadrants and the output of the ESD driver filter bank are saved to frames. The model runs at 65kHz.

Here's the first spectrum of the QPD X and Y signals, acquired with the digital system. Roughing and turbo pumps are still on.

The noise floor seems quite non stationary. To be investigated.

[EricQ, Gabriele]

The real time system seems to be working properly, except for the excitations: we can't activate any excitation using awggui or diaggui

Eric rebuilt the workstation from scratch installing Debian 8.5. All CDS software seem to be working. We setup a ssh-key for ssh'ing into cymac3 and configured the automatic mount of the remote /opt/rtcds.

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)