Noise hunting is in progress, I checked the error noise from ACAV and RCAV loops and compared them to the beat. The beat is about an order of magnitude higher than the sum of error noise.

 NOte: slope of error signal RCAV = 1.57 MHz/V (13 dBm from Marconi, throug 4-way splitter, to BB EOM, 1mW input power).

ABOVE: beat signal in comparison with noise at error points from ACAV and RCAV loops. The beat signal is about an order of magnitude higher than the error noise.

I'm working on optimization and noise characterization of the setup. Before measuring the beat I have to make sure that:

• The beams to the cavities are aligned
• The power input is 1mW for both cavities
• I aligned the polarization of the beams into EOM for side band ( minimizing RFAM)
• The gains for TTFSS are adjusted and recorded
• Beams in the beat setup are aligned, and dumped properly.
• The PD is not saturated.
• PLL is setup properly.

I think the gain in the TTFSS is the problem. For ACAV, the scattered light from the window interferes with the main beam and causes the loop to oscillate when the gain is up. For RCAV, the EOM is a broadband one and does not have enough gain. The bump in the frquency lower than 100Hz is probably the contribution from scattered light. I have not properly dumped all beams yet.

Also I noticed that the beat signal has weird sidebands at +/- 100kHz, 200kHz, and 300kHz, see the figure below. I'm not sure why, I have not seen it before. I might saturate the PD making it distorted from a perfect sine wave. I'll investigate this.