Reports until 08:53, Tuesday 16 September 2014
H1 PSL (PSL)
peter.king@LIGO.ORG - posted 08:53, Tuesday 16 September 2014 (13944)
PSL Diagnostic Breadboard Scan
One thing to note about this week's diagnostic breadboard scans, is that the reference cavity transmission has deteriorated
down to ~1 V.  Although the power reflected by the pre-modecleaner is about the same, at ~ 2.1 W.  For reasons unknown at the
moment, the frequency stabilisation servo had a tendency to lose lock and/or oscillate.  I reduced the common gain from 30 dB
to 27 dB for these measurements to see if that'd make things a little more robust - at least whilst the scans were being
conducted.  The input modecleaner was flashing during this period too, which would partly explain why the reference cavity
was blinking.

The relative power noise measurement looks the same as last week.  Nothing significant to report.

During the frequency noise measurement, the input modecleaner lost lock which caused the reference cavity to lose lock.
The pull on the laser frequency was such that even the pre-modecleaner in the diagnostic breadboard lost lock for a split
second.  Both error and control signals are higher than the reference measurement, most likely because of the problems mentioned.
Both are about a factor of 100 higher than normal.  There is a peak both spectrums at 10 Hz that was not present in prior measurements.
The problems seem to also coincide with a peak in the 1-3 Hz seismic noise region.

A repeat of the frequency noise measurement when things appeared "quieter" still had a peak at 10 Hz.  The measurement was disturbed by
a period of oscillation due to the input modecleaner losing lock and trying to re-acquire.

The beam pointing measurement looks nominal.  Nothing significant to report.

The mode scan looks nominal.  4.3% higher order mode power, higher order mode count 54.

The intensity stabilisation power noise measurement looks good.  Better than the reference measurement everywhere except above ~7 kHz.
Non-image files attached to this report