We aligned the bonding template onto the glass braedboard. This was done with the help of a vernier caliper and adjusting teh peek screws at the edge of the templates to make sure that the gap between the breadboard and template edges are equal for each pair of opposite sides.

[Camille, Stephen, Thejas]

Today, before the ZYGO lab was cleaned and prepared for the cureved mirrors' radius of curvature (ROC) characterization, Mirror no. 6 was mounted into one of the half inch mirror holders. The cleanliness of the envoronment and handling was not satisfactory. Tomorrow efforts will be made to start doing the ROC measurements with class B cleanroom garbing.

[Camille, Thejas, Stephen]

Yesterday, efforts were made to measure ROC of curved mirrors (#6) in the ZYGO lab using a Fizeau Interferometer. Peculiar observation: Stray fringes were seen that dominated the fringes that conformed with the expectation. The origin of these fringes is still not accounted for (see attached screenshot). moreover, once the right fringe pattern is achieved by moving the end mirror of the interferometer using a translation stage, the cavity length is measured using a metre stick. This makes the measurement limited by the accuracy using ruler stick for cavity length measurement, which is not expected to be any better than usign a beam profiler to find the focal point from the curved mirror. Today we will, move ahead to corved mirror surface profile characterization.

[Camille, GarriLynn, Stephen, Thejas]

Folllowing the replacement of the spherical transmission / reference mirror with a flat mirror, on Friday we were able to observe fringes that facilitated characterization of the curvature minimum. 

\

By rotating the curved optic by 90 deg we couodn't reproduce consistent data. 

This is probably due to insufficient attention given to the orientation/centering of the curved mirror under the clamp. 

RoC: 2.65m ! Interesting. I'll wait for the follow-up analysis/measurements. The RoC may be dependent on the area (diameter) for the fitting. You might want to run the fitting of your own. If so, let me know. I have some Matlab code that is compatible with the CSV file exported from MetroPro data.

OMC test set-up

Yesterday, laser beam output from the fibre follwoing teh mode-matching lenses was picked off and beam profile was characterized using beam profiler Thorlabs BP209-VIS. 

The gaussian fit beam diameter was measured to be about wx = 939 um wy = 996 um at the location of a distance of 0.4 m from the high reflector. The mode content of this beam is about 98% TEM00. We want to use this beam within the Rayleigh range (near field) to measure radium of curvature of the curved optics. 

The Rayleigh range is about 0.74 m. 

Beam profile of the input beam was measured at it's beam waist, this is to ensure the input beam waist matches the cavity beam waist (mode-matching) - ref attachement 2

w_0x: 456.47032902662903 +/- 1.4466927709703827 um
z_0x: 0.35828846919253937 +/- 0.008323313108283267 m

w_0y: 495.1490367020396 +/- 1.917471337851956 um
z_0y: 0.3568228323785801 +/- 0.01418698585815903 m

The larger y wasit size is realized to be due to a pitch angle of the beam. But the relevance if this exercise is to determine the position of the beam waist so that the transport fixture can be positioned such that there is good matching. 

The error in beam profiler measuremetns is between 4-6 um for the data points.

The modematching lens breadboard was translated along the direction of the beam to make available enough room for the transport fixture's placement such that the input beam waist falls at the center of the cavity. 

Nice measurement. This result suggests that the fiber mode is supposed to be matched to the OMC cavity by 99.8% at z0=0.358 m. Note that the OMCmode has a waist radius of 0.4896 mm and 0.4905 mm for the horizontal and vertical modes, respectively.

In reality, the fiber mode contains higher-order HG modes. Therefore the actual mode matching will be limited to ~98%.

[Camille, Stephen, Thejas]

Contnuing the efforts to measure and check perpendicularity: tombstone prisms with holes/ hole prisms (HP).

Note: Veritcal crosshair splitting can be seen in the some of the image. This is probably because the horizontal of the Al flat mirror is not parallel to that of the coupling mirror. This was confirmed by touching the so that the setup roll a bit so as to reduce the vertical splitting. In some cases the position of the prism on the flat mirror was changes to reduce this effect, in some other cases this was not very helpful and measurement was done anyway. We expect that teh vertical splitting and horizontal splitting don't couple into each other. We think the clamping mechanism for this kind of measurement can be improved to avoid these artefacts. 

HP40

HP41

HP42

HP43

HP44

HP45

HP46

HP47

HP48

HP49

HP50

HP51

HP 52

HP 53

HP 54

HP 55

HP 56

HP 57

[Camille, Thejas]

Steps followed to acheive this resonance:

1. Make sure the input beam is roughly aligned to the center of the flat mirrors (FMs). The height of the beam should be roughly the height of the curved mirrors

2. When you see incident spot on the CM1, use one of the beam steering mirrors to yaw the input beam such that the position the beam spot on the CM1 such that it is centered. (different from the assembly procedure)

3. Now use the micrometer on CM1 to adjust the spot on CM2 such that it's centered there. (different from the assembly procedure)

4. Now use micrometers on CM2 to merge the spot created by the beam reflected from CM2 and incident beam. 

5. Now use one of the steering mirrors and yaw the mirrors in a particular direction. Now repeat processes 3-5 unitl you see an improvement on the beam spots and they start merging. If this is not helping, change the direction in which you yawed the steerting mirror in the starting of this step.

6. At this point you should have the laser frequency scanning, say about 8 Hz, this will make the transmitted beam appear flashing (https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPWevx1_4bMFYei6ZQybmhTETlgGgJVTV6RMMv6gh_IxFMd0PUnmdXBu674QlhhNg/photo/AF1QipPalJGieVv80msC9x7jxCvDslgpPUaDY8JGbr5d?key=UlNGdUpQMUpiT1JMQ2ZxTXFYc2FVdTZaaTlSMm9R). Also maybe use a CCD camera at the transmission to optimize the alignment unitl you see TEM00 (there will be other modes, https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPWevx1_4bMFYei6ZQybmhTETlgGgJVTV6RMMv6gh_IxFMd0PUnmdXBu674QlhhNg/photo/AF1QipM1NCCZfC_N0wdzl8QnPgJPccTibM2q5LfvoUfK?key=UlNGdUpQMUpiT1JMQ2ZxTXFYc2FVdTZaaTlSMm9R)

Next week, we will

1. Lock the cavity and improve the power in the TEM00 transmission. 

2. Assess beam spot positiosn on the mirrors, take photographs. 

3. If not happy, swap the sub-assemblies. Earlier last week, we took put the subassembly with CM #30, maybe bring this back adn align the cavity. 

With CM #30 at CM1 position and CM #14 at CM2 postion, when the beam spot on the CM1 is a little lower than the central line the spot position on the CM2 is higher. This not expected given that the ROC of these mirrors is large. We swapped the position of these mirrors and the spot positons on these CMs is not consistent i.e. whne the spot on CM1 is lower the same is true for CM2. But we see that the first reflection spot from FM1 is higher than the incident beam spot on FM2. We were unable to merge these spots by walking the beam. 

The reason for this could be:

1 Positive pitch of CM #30 subassembly

2 Prism at FM1 has a positive pitch

[2023.07.13 - Stephen, Camille, Thejas, Maria]

We bonded Curved Mirror assemblies today. Some notes about this log entry:

• Thejas will post a log discussing matching.
• This log hosts a subset of the photos posted to the A+ OMC photo dump.
• The results of the bonding activities (including photos of complete assemblies, comments on bonding fixture take-apart, and assesment of bonding) will be discussed in an upcoming log

The bonding procedure E1300201-v1 section 6.2 was followed, with the following additions:

• PZT surfaces and leads were wiped with IPA. (Attachment 1)
• Tombstone surfaces were sprayed with Top Gun and then wiped with IPA. (Attachment 2)
• Curved mirror optical surfaces S1 and S2 were sprayed with Top Gun.
• Curved mirror barrel was sprayed with Top Gun and then wiped with IPA.
  • This should have been with acetone per E1100439-v7 "Diagnostic Optics, In Vacuum, without ground glass, superpolished" but we did not find lens tissue and made a compromise.
• Two styles of transparent measurement template were constructed, and the intended optic fiducial location was marked on the PEEK bonding ficture plate. (Attachment 3)
• A small dot of First Contact had been added to the S1 surface of each curved mirror during characterization. This dot had to be removed by gentle scraping with the plastic surface of a cleanroom swab. (Attachment 4)
• The least count of the scale we were using was 0.5g (when I started, I didn't notice, and thought it was 0.1g). As a result, we measured *just a bit more than* 7.5 g of epoxy and *just a bit less than* 8.0 g of epoxy + spheres. Not ideal. Calibration with 300g is shown. (Attachment 5)

The remaining images and comments simply present an abbreviated log of the bonding activities.

• Epoxy was not expired! (Attachment 6)
• The curing test went well - the epoxy cracked very dramatically. (Attachment 7)
• Bonding of the first PZT and Curved Mirror seemed to go pretty well. (Attachment 8-10)
• Some new recruits got their hands dirty! (Attachment 11)
• Four assemblies were prepared (Attachment 12) and loaded into the oven (transported there with foil) (Attachment 13).
• The run was started (Attachment 14), the soak started on time (Attachment 15), and the soak ended on time (Attachment 16).
  • In-person check-in on ABO A controller software at ~3 hours after run start and ~5.5 hours after run start.

[2023.07.13]

The attached table includes the characterization values used to inform the matches for the first four units, Curved Mirror Assy Batch 1.

Thejas prioritized the matches using these insights. Some notes:

• Only PZTs which were listed in the "DC Response after burn-in" column were available for selection.
• The "Corrected Length to Angle" column includes the after burn-in DC Response.
• The script-generated value in the "Length to Angle" column is using the before burn-in DC Response.

I'm planning to update this log eventually with the script and with the report plots showing the raw data and calculations.

[Camille, Thejas, Stephen]

We set up the white light autocollimator in the Downs B119 cleanroom. (Nippon Kogaku, from Mike Smith).

After some initial effort to refine the fixturing and alignment, we located the S1 crosshair reflection and aligned to the autocollimator reticle using the pitch and yaw adjustments in the prism mount.

We subsequently used the rotation stage adjustment to locate the S2 crosshair reflection and measure the vertical and horizontal wedges.

Faint horizontal crosshair from the S2 reflection can be seen in the image below.

This is aligned with the reticle using rotation mount on which the prism mount is clamped.

Initial readiing of the rotation mount screw: 9.2 

Final reading: 2.2

Here we see that the crosshair from S2 reflected light is offset in the vertical axis by approx. 2 div. From hte image below this should

correspond to 2 arcmin vertical wedge angle.The horizontal wedge angle is yet to be caluclated.

[Camille, Thejas, Stephen]

Continuing yesterday's efforts to measure the wedge angle of the back surface of the prisms. We completed measurement for all the 18 prisms.

The images below accompanying the readings represent the S2 crosshair image on top of the reticle, alighned for yaw.

But note that the vertical misalignement with the reticle does not give an accurate measurement for vertical wedge angle. This is because, as it's notecable in the images, 

the S1 reflected crosshair's horizontal axis goes out of coincidence from the horizontal axis of the reticle as the stage is rotated. Our thoughts: MAy be the horizontal 

plane of the mount is not the same as the horizontal plane of the autocollimator.

Each unit of the readings corresponds to 0.1 deg., the resolution of the rotational stage is 0.2 deg. The requirement is 0.5 deg of wedge angle. And this angle is related to the horizontal wedge angle by: 

Prism 02

Initial reading of the screw on the rotation (yaw) stage (ini): 7.6 

Final reading of the screw (fin): 0.2

Prism 04

ini: + 5.1

fin: - 8.0

Prism 05

ini: + 1.8

fin: - 5.5

Prism 06

ini: + 5.8

fin: - 8.5

Prism 07

ini: 8.2

fin: 1.0 

Prism 09

ini: +1.0

fin: - 4.2

Prism 10

ini: +9.1

final: +2.2

Prism 11

ini: 9.1

fin: 2.0 

Prism 12

ini: 9.0

fin: 2.2

Prism 13

ini: 9.0 

fin: 2.2

Prism 14

ini: 9.0 

fin: 2.1

Prism 15

ini: 9.0

fin: 2.0 

Prism 16

ini: 9.0 

fin: 2.2

Prism 17

ini: 9.0

fin: 2.0

Prism 22

ini: 9.0 

fin: 2.1

Prism 24

ini: 9.1

fin: 2.1

Prism 26

ini: 9.0 

fin: 2.3

This totals 18 prisms including yesterdays. 

[Camille, Thejas]

Post sub-assembly bonding of CM : Madeline will post a separate update on the Oven temperature profile.

The subassemblies were taken out of the oven. The bonding fixture plates were carefully taken apart, sub-assembly #1 involving curved mirror #30 required a large amount of force with a tweezer to pull the fixture plates apart from the subassembly.  

All the other subassemblies were easy to separate from the bonding fixtrue. 

Excess bond was cleaned off of the mounting prism surface carefully.

The subassemblies were then packed carefully to be transported to the OMC lab west bridge sub basement.

The transport 

Pens like Sharpie are not recommended to be used for CLASS B parts.

Below are the gluesheets for the first four PZT subassembly bonding.

The cavity falls out of lock very often when subjected to slight movements of objects on the optic table. On Wednesday, we tried to bring the cavity back to resonance when one of the curved mirrors' position was slightly disturbed. And now the reflected cavity power is higher than that achieved on Tuesday (see below). This means mode-matching efficiency is about 96.5%. The laser control signal and reflected PD signal also seem noiser than Tuesday (refer to attachment). We want to improve this before continuing to monitoring the beam spot positions on the mirrors. Is that a good idea or is it okay to continue with this level of mode-matching? Also the noise level is concerning, this wasn't present earlier, we want to investigate this.

The amount of the reflected beam is a function of the mode matching and the cavity loss.

- The noise could show up larger when the PDH lock has the error offset. Try to tune the input offset knob (which has no knob dial ;) ) to minimize the reflection DC.

- The mode matching tends to get worse if the beam is not going through the center of the two mode-matching lenses after the fiber coupler.
  If you find the beams are too far off from the centers, bring them back towards the center and use the steering mirrors after the lenses to align the beam to the cavity.

- After this, you can try to move the position of the mode matching lenses using the micrometers on the base stages. This again misaligns the beam a bit, this can be compensated by the fiber mount.

- If the large mode mismatch seems removed by the input optics, you don't need to pursue it too much. Just continue to get the satisfactory beam axis, beam spot positions, camera alignment, and reflection PD alignment. We can still make the power budget measurement with this level of mode matching.

As Koji noticed that the AOM efficiency was very low, I figured I would try looking at it with a fresh set of eyes. The end result is that I have to agree that the AOM appears to be broken.

First, I measured the input impedance of the AOM using the AG4395A with the impedance test kit (after calibrating). The plot is below. The spec sheet says the center frequency is 200 MHz, at which Z_in should be ~50 ohms. It crosses 50 ohms somewhere near 235 MHz, which may be reasonable given that the LC circuit can be tuned by hand. However, it does surprise me that the impedance varies so much over the specified RF range of ±50 MHz. Maybe this is an indication that something is bad.

I removed the cover of the modulator (which I think Koji did, as well) and all the connections looked as I imagine they should---i.e., there was nothing obviously broken, physically.

I then tried my hand at realigning the AOM from scratch by removing and replacing it. I was not able to get better than 0.15%, which is roughly what Koji got.

So, perhaps our best course of action is to decide what we expect the Z_in spectrum to look like, and whether that agrees with the above measurement.

[Koji, Lisa, Jeff, Zach]

Jeffs concern after talking with the glue company (EMI) was that the UV blast for the top side was not enough.

First we wanted to confirm if too much blasting is any harmful for the glue joint.

We took a test joint of FS-FS with the UV epoxy. We blasted the UV for 1min with ~15mm distance from the joint.
After the observation of the joint, we continued to blast more.
In total, we gave additional 5min exposure. No obvious change was found on the joint.

Then proceed to blast the OMC top again. We gave 1 min additional blast on each glue joint.

[koji,philip, joe, liyuan, steven]

*still need to add photos to post*

PZT 11 was removed and inspected for so dust/dirt on the bottom of the prism. We saw a spot. We tried to remove this with acetone, but it stayed there. (Attachment 2, see the little white spec near the edge of the bottom surface of the prism)

current micrometer positions:

• CM1: one closest to centre 11, close to edge 35 marking
• CM2: both at 20 marking

Swapped PZT for PZT 22, cleaned the bottom and put it into position of CM1. We saw a low number of newton rings, so this is good.

We got a rough initial alignment by walking the beam with the periscope and PZT 22  mirrors. Once we saw a faint amount of transmission, we set up the wincam at the output. The reflected light from the cavity could also be seen to be flashing as the laser frequency was being modulated. 

Once it was roughly aligned, using the persicope we walked the beam until we got good 00 flashes. We checked the positions of the spots on the mirror with the beam card. This looked a lot better in the verticle direction (very near the centre) on both curved mirrors. We locked the cavity and contiued to align it better. This was done with the periscope until the DC error signal was about 0.6V. We switched to the fibre coupler after this. 

Once we were satisfied that he cavity was near where it would be really well aligned, we took some images of the spot positions. Using these we can work out which way to move the curved mirrors. Koji worked this out and drew some diagrams, we should attach them to this post. [Diagram: See Attachment 1 of ELOG OMC 350]

We made the corrections to the cavity mirrors

• CM1: one closest to centre 11, close to edge 35+16 marking
• CM2: I can't remember exactly, Koji created a diagram which would help explain this step [Diagram: See Attachment 2 of ELOG OMC 350]

The scatter from CM1 looked very small, it was hard to see with a viewer or CCD. We had to turn up the laser power by a factor of 3 to begin to see it, indicating that this is a good mirror.

Once this was done, the spot positions looked uch nearer the centre of each mirror. They look pitched 1mm too high, which might be because of the bottom surfaces of the prisms having a piece of dust on them? For now though it was good enough to try take the detuned locking FSR measurement and RFAM measurement. 

To see the higher order mode spacing, we misaligned them incoming beam in pitch and yaw so that the TM10 and TM01 modes were excited. The cavity transmission beam was aligned onto the photodiode such that we could make a transfer function measurement (i.e. shift the beam along the photodiode so that only half of the beam was on it, this maximises the amount of photocurrent).

attachment 1 shows the fitting of the detuned locking method for measuring FSR and cavity length/

I saved this data on my laptop. When I next edit this post (hopefully I will before monday, although I might be too tired from being a tourist in california...) I want to upload plots of the higher order mode spacing.

[Zach Koji]

The first attempt not to touch the curved mirrors did not work. (Not surprising)
The eigenmode is not found on the mirror surface.

We decided to touch the micrometers and immediately found the resonance.
Then the cavity alignment was optimized by the input steering mirrors.

We got the cavity length L and f_TMS/f_FSR (say gamma, = gouy phase / (2 pi) ) as
    L=1.1347 m        (1.132m nominal)
    gamma_V = 0.219176    (0.21879 nominal)
    gamma_H = 0.219418    (0.21939 nominal)

This was already sufficiently good:
- the 9th modes of the carrier is away from the resonance 10-11 times
  of the line width (LW)
- the 13th modes of the lower f2 sideband are 9-10 LW away
But
- the 19th modes of the upper f2 sideband are 1-3 LW away
  This seems to be the most dangerous ones.
and
- The beam spots on the curved mirrors are too marginal

So we decided to shorten the cavity round-trip 2.7mm (= 0.675mm for each micrometer)
and also use the curved mirrors to move the eigenmode toward the center of the curved mirrors.

After the movement the new cavity length was 1.13209 m.
The spot positions on the curved mirrors are ~1mm too close to the outside of the cavity.
So we shortened the outer micrometers by 8um (0.8 div).
This made the spot positions perfect. We took the photos of the spots with a IR sensor card.

The measured cavity geometry is (no data electrically recorded)
    L=1.13207 m        (1.132m nominal, FSR 264.8175MHz)
    gamma_V = 0.218547    (0.21879 nominal, 57.8750MHz)
    gamma_H = 0.219066    (0.21939 nominal, 58.0125MHz)
- the 9th modes of the carrier is 11-13 LW away
- the 13th modes of the lower f2 sideband are 5-8 LW away
- the 19th modes of the upper f2 sideband are 4-8 LW away

The raw transmission is 94.4%. If we subtract the sidebands and
the junk light contribution, the estimated transmission is 97.6%.

Note:
Even if a mirror is touched (i.e. misaligned), we can recover the good alignment by pushing the mirror
onto the fixture. The fixture works pretty well!
 

Notes on the OMC cavity alignment strategy

- x3=1.17 γ + 1.40 δ, x4=1.40 γ + 1.17 δ
- This means that the effect of the two curved mirrors (i.e. gouy phases) are very similar. To move x3 and x4 in common is easy, but to do differentially is not simple.
- 1div of a micrometer is 10um. This corresponds to the angular motion of 0.5mrad (10e-6/20e-3 = 5e-4). ~0.5mm spot motion.
- ~10um displacement of the mirror longitudinal position has infinitesimal effect on the FSR. Just use either micrometer (-x side).
- 1div of micrometer motion is just barely small enough to keep the cavity flashing. => Easier alignment recovery. Larger step causes longer time for the alignment recovery due to the loss of the flashes.

- After micrometer action, the first move should be done by the bottom mirror of the periscope. And this is the correct direction for beam walking.

- If x3 should be moved more than x4, use CM2, and vise versa.
- If you want to move x3 to +x and keep x4 at a certain place, 1) Move CM2 in (+). This moves x3 and x4 but x3>x4. 2) Compensate x4 by turning CM1 in (-). This returnes x4 to the original position (approximately), but leave x3 still moved. Remember the increment is <1div of a micrometer and everytime the cavity alignment is lost, recover it before loosing the flashes.

The bottom-side templates were removed.

The last beam dump was removed

TODO

ICS entry

Bring the OMC to the bake lab

Vacuum baking

Bring it back to the OMC lab

Cabling / Wiring

VIbratin test

Optical tests

Backscattering test

Packing / Shipping

All of the INVAR blocks have been glued.

I found thinner shims in the stock.

On Monday, the template will be removed.

EP30-2 7g mixed with 0.35g of 75-90um sphere

TODO

EP30-2 gluing of the INVAR blocks for the PDs

PDs/QPDs need to be slightly lower -> order more shims

Remove the templates

Glue the last beam dump

Vibration test?

Bring the OMC to the bake lab

Vacuum baking

Bring it back to the OMC lab

Cabling / Wiring

Optical tests

Backscattering test

Packing / Shipping

- All of the PRISM mirrors have been glued

- 4 out of 5 beam dumps have been glued

TODO

EP30-2 gluing of the INVAR blocks for the PDs

PDs/QPDs need to be slightly lower -> order more shims

Remove the templates

Glue the last beam dump

Vibration test?

Bring the OMC to the bake lab

Vacuum baking

Bring it back to the OMC lab

Cabling / Wiring

Optical tests

Backscattering test

Packing / Shipping

An autocollimator (AC) should show (0,0) if a retroreflector is placed in front of the AC.
However, the AC may have an offset. Also the retroreflector may not reflect the beam back with an exact parallelism.

To calibrate these two errors, the autocollimator is calibrated. The retroreflector was rotated by 0, 90, 180, 270 deg
while the reticle position are monitored. The images of the autocollimator were taken by my digital camera looking at the eyepiece of the AC.

Note that 1 div of the AC image corresponds to 1arcmin.

Basically the rotation of the retroreflector changed the vertical and horizontal positions of the reticle pattern by 0.6mdeg and 0.1mdeg
(2 and 0.4 arcsec). Therefore the parallelism of the retrorefrector is determined to be less than an arcsec. This is negligibly good for our purpose.

The offset changes by ~1div in a slanted direction if the knob of the AC, whose function is unknown, is touched.
So the knob should be locked, and the offset should be recorded before we start the actual work every time.

The items:

- Autocollimator (AC) borrowed from Mike Smith (Nippon Kogaku model 305, phi=2.76", 67.8mm)

- Retroreflector (corner cube)

- Two V grooves borrowed from the 40m

Procedure:

- Autocollimator calibration

o Install the AC on a optical table

o Locate the corner cube in front of the AC.

o Adjust the focus of the AC so that the reflected reticle pattern can be seen.

o If the retroreflection and the AC are perfect, the reference reticle pattern will match with the reflected reticle pattern.

o Measure the deviation of the reflected reticle from the center.

o Rotate the retroreflector by 90 deg. Measure the deviation again.

o Repeat the process until total four coordinates are obtained.

o Analysis of the data separates two types of the error:
   The average of these four coordinates gives the systematic error of the AC itself.
   The vector from the center of the circle corresponds to the error of the retroreflector.

- Wedge angle measurement

To be continued

For the production of the aLIGO PDs, the following transfer of the PDs were carried out
A1-23 Cage A1 -> G1
A1-25 Cage A2 -> G2

The cage A will be baked at 75degC to see if this improves AMU=64 emission.

At the same time, we will put C1-05 (F1) and C1-07 (F2) into the contamination test cavity.

Possible reduction of the QE was observed after air-bake at 75degC.

Yesterday I received Cage G from Bob for intermediate test of the PD performance after air bake but before vacuum bake.
This cage was prepared to be the production pair.

According to the ICS, https://ics-redux.ligo-la.caltech.edu/JIRA/browse/Bake-8047
the PDs were air baked at 75degC for 48 hours.

I took the PDs to my lab to check if there is any issue in terms of the performance.
- Dark current: No change observed
- Dark noise: No noise increase observed
- QE: Probably reduced by ~0.5%.

Here I attached the result of the QE measurement. I have measured the QEs of the baked ones (A1-23 and A1-25) and the reference. Since the reference PD has not been baked, this gives us the measure of the systematic effect. The reference showed the reduction of ~0.1%. Assuming this reduction came from the systematic effect of the measurement system, I observed at least 0.5% QE reduction (A1-23). Note that the previous measurement of 99.8% for A1-25 was too high and dubious. But both A1-23 and A1-25 showed ~0.4% lower QEs.

So I believe the air-baking process reduced the QE.

Another evidence was that now I could clearly see the beam spots on these air-baked-PDs with an IR viewer when the PDs were illuminated with a 1064nm beam. Usually it is difficult to see the spot on the PD. The spot on the reference PD was still dark. So this difference was very obvious. I was afraid that something has been deposited on the surface of the photosensitive element. The surface of the diodes looked still very clean when they were checked with a green LED flash light.

While the OMC breadboard was being inspected, it was found that two out of five black-glass beam dumps showed sign of delamination.
(attached photos).

The base of the each beam dump is a fused silica disk (25mm dia.). The black glass pieces are bonded to the disk. The bond is EP30-2
epoxy without glass beads for bond lining. The disk is bonded on the fused silica bread board with Optocast UV low-viscous epoxy.
The delamination is about 70% of the bonded area. They don't seem to fall off immediately. But the glass pieces are not completely secure.
(i.e. finger touch can change the newton ring fringes) So there might be some risk of falling off during transportation.

The engineering team and I are exploring the way to secure them in-situ, including the method to apply UV epoxy with capillary action.

Here is the resolution.

I'll apply fillets of EP30-2 along the edges of the black glass (See figure).
In order to allow the air escape from the gap, the inside of the V will not be painted.
In any case, I don't have a good access to the interior of the V.

Dennis assured that the outgassing level will be ok even if the EP30-2 is cured at the room temp if the mixture is good.
But just in case, we should run an RGA scan (after 50degC for 24hour vac bake).
I prefer to do this RGA scan right after all of the test and cabling and right before the shipment.
Dennis is checking if we can even waive the RGA scan owing to the small volume of the glue.

My hypothesis about the input-side collimator turned out to be correct.

I removed the fiber from the collimator and mount at the input side, and then injected the illuminator beam from this side. Since we already saw a nice (but dim) IR beam emerging from the output side the other night, it followed that that collimator was correctly attached. With the illuminator injected from the input side, I also saw a nice, collimated red beam emerging from the output. So, the input collimator was not properly attached during our previous attempts, leading to the abysmal coupling.

The problem is that the mount does not allow you to remove and reattach the fiber while the collimator is already attached, and the dimensions make it hard to fit your fingers in to tighten the fiber to the collimator once the collimator is in the mount. I disassembled the mount and found a way to attach/reattach the fiber that preserves the tight collimator contact. I will upload a how-to shortly.

With this fix, I was able to align the input beam and get decent coupling:

EOM path: ~70%

AOM path: ~50%

We had to move our flipper mirror to share the beam between Peter's setup and ours as our flipper is at the place where the ISS PD array base is supposed to be!
There was no place to insert the flipper in the setup. We (Peter and Koji) decided to move the laser back for ~2".

This entirely changed the alignment of the setup. The fiber coupler was my reference of the alignment.
Once the beam is aligned, I check the coupling to the fiber. It was 50%.

I tweaked the lens and eventually the coupling is improved to 83%. (24.7mW incident, 20.4mW obtained.)

Then, I started to check the AOM path. I noticed that the 1st (or -1st) order beam is very weak.
The deflection efficiency is ~0.1%. Something is wrong.
I checked the driver. The driver's coupler output (1:10) show the amplitude ~1V. (good)
I check the main output by reducing the offset. When the coupler output is 100mV, the main output was 1V. (good)
So is the AOM itself broken???

[Stephen, Koji]

20 glass beamdumps were bonded at the 40m cleanroom.

Attachment 1: We had 20 fused silica disks with a V-groove and 40 black glass pieces
Attachment 2: The black glass pieces had (usual) foggy features. It is well known to be very stubborn. We had to use IPA/acetone and wiping with pressure. Most of the feature was removed, but we could still see some. We decided to use the better side for the inner V surfaces.
Attachment 3: EP30-2 expiration date was 1/22/2020 👍. 7.66g of EP30-2 was poured and 0.38g of glass sphere was added. Total glue weight was 8.04g
Attachment 4: Glue test piece was baked at 200F in a toaster oven for ~12min. It had no stickiness. It was totally crisp. 👍👍👍
Attachment 5: Painted glue on the V-groove and put the glass pieces in. Then gave a dub of blue at the top and bottom of the V from the outside. In the end, we mostly had the glue went through the V part due to capillary action.
Attachment 6: The 20 BDs were stored in stainless vats. We looked at them for a while to confirm there is no drift and opening of the V part. Because the air bake oven was not available at the time, we decided to leave the assys there for the room temp curing, and then later bake them for the completion of the curing.
 

Received black glass beam dumps from MIT

- gluing by EP30-2 looks pretty fine. Enough sturdy.

- some gap visible between the glass => incident angle should be considered so that the first beam does not exit from the gap

- Dusts are visible on the glass surface. Some have a lot, the other have less. But every piece still needs to be wiped.

[Alena, Koji]

Report of the work on June 30.

1. Cleaning of the black glass beam dumps

As reported in the previous entry, the beam dumps on the OMC breadboard exhibited accumulation of dusts or contaminants on the black glass surfaces. We worried about transfer of the dusts over a period or of the contaminant during baking. It was already known that the contaminants are persistent and not easy to remove only by drag wiping with IPA. So Alena brought a set fo tools to try. Here is the procedure described.

- Inventory (Attachment 1): A small glass beaker, TX715 Alpha® Sampling Swab, plastic brushes, syringes with pure IPA, inspection flash light, Vectra IPA soaked wipes

- Apply clean IPA on a brush. Some IPA should be removed by the IPA soaked wipe so as not to splash IPA everywhere. Rub a glass surface with the brush while the surface is inspected by the flash light. The strokes migrate the contaminants to the direction of wiping. So the brush should be moved outward. This does some cleaning, but it is not enough to remove smudges on the surface. Occasionally clean the brush with IPA poured in the small beaker.

- Apply clean IPA on a swab. Rub the surface with the swab outward. This removes most of the visible smudges.

We decided not to apply FirstContact on the beam dumps at this occasion. In any case, we need to apply FC on all the optical surfaces after the baking. We judged that the current cleanliness level of the beam dump does not affect the over all contamination of the OMC considering the FC application after the baking.

2. Gluing of the reinforcement Al bars on the delaminated Invar mounting brackets
One of the mounting bracket (=invar shim) on the top side (= suspension I/F side) showed the sign of delamination (Attachment 3). This invar is the one at the beam entrance side (Attachment 2).

EP30-2 was mixed as usual: 6g of EP30-2 was mixed with 0.3g glass sphere. The glue was tested with a cooking oven and the result was perfect. The glue was applied to two Al bars and the bars were attached on the long sides of the invar shim with the beveled corner down (to avoid stepping on the existing original epoxy) (Attachments 4, 5). The photo quality by my phone was not great. I will take better photos with a better camera next week.

Glue condition was checked on Monday Jul 3rd. It was all good. New photos were taken. OMC #002 Repair - Gluing of reinforcement AL bars

Bond reinforcement blocks for the invar brackets:

• Attachment 1: CLASS A glass prisms (the surplus of the 2016 repair)
• Attachment 2: Dirty reiforcement bars made of Aluminum
• There are also many dirty prisms in the kit obtained from Stephen

Borrowed for PZT DC Response Shadow Sensor Setup (see Attachment 1):

• Thorlabs PDA100A Photodiode (and power supply)
• Thorlabs MDT694B Piezo Driver

Current Location: Downs 227

The ThorLabs MDT694B piezo driver was returned to the OMC lab.

From Cryo Cav setup

Borrowed LB1005 Servo box -> OMC

Apr 16, 2019
Borrowed two laser goggles from the 40m. (Returned Apr 29, 2019)
Borrowed small isopropanol glass bottole from CTN.

Apr 19, 2019
Borrowed from the 40m:
- Universal camera mount
- 50mm CCD lens
- zoom CCD lens (Returned Apr 29, 2019)
- Olympus SP-570UZ (Returned Apr 29, 2019)
- Special Olympus USB Cable (Returned Apr 29, 2019)

I’ve borrowed the black and decker toaster oven to dry some sonicated parts. It is temporarly located in the QIL lab. 

OMC Reinforcement blocks

1. P/N D1600316; Version v4; Type 01; Qty 30; Source Chemistry Machine Shop
2. P/N D1600316; Version v4; Type 02; Qty 15; Source Chemistry Machine Shop
3. P/N D1600316; Version v4; Type 01; Qty 40; Source Resource MFG PO S422806
4. P/N D1600316; Version v4; Type 02; Qty 40; Source Resource MFG PO S422806

Stephen asked Srinath for the ICS entry.
Stephen made the C&B request https://cleanandbake.ligo.caltech.edu/clean_and_bake/request/1708/

Madeline was asked to take care of the C&B.

Also, the Torr Seal box was returned to Madeline.

An Excelitas C30665 PD with the cap removed (SN07 in Case H slot #2) was exposed to the beam with the optical power of 1.4mW to 334mW.
After each illumination, the dark current and the dark noise level were tested. Also the photo image of the PD surface was taken each time.

- No significant change of the dark current after each illumination.

- No significant change of the dark noise after each illumination.

- No visible change of the surface observed.

I handed Camille the C7 mirror for the cross-calibration of the ROC characterization techniques.