Reports until 09:14, Tuesday 23 September 2014
H1 PSL (PSL)
peter.king@LIGO.ORG - posted 09:14, Tuesday 23 September 2014 - last comment - 09:27, Tuesday 23 September 2014(14091)
PSL Diagnostic Breadboard Scan
The power noise measurement looks okay.  Noisier than the reference measurement between 10 Hz and about 3 kHz.  The diffracted power whilst averaging around 3% is wandering around a little - normally it's relatively flat.

Whilst the frequency noise scan was being done, the reference cavity transmission was around 2.05 V, common gain 27 dB, fast gain 15 dB.  It had been locked for ~10 hours.  The frequency noise spectrum again has these "step" like features at low frequencies.  This is about the 3rd or 4th week that this feature has been present.  I suspect it will take more than the customary 4 hour Tuesday morning maintenance period to address this issue.  It looks like we're not getting much bandwidth as the control and error signals intersect below 100 Hz.

The beam pointing looks nominal.

The mode scan looks nominal, higher order mode count 56, higher order mode power 4.6%.

The relative power noise is noticeably worse than the previous measurement.  A check of the diffracted power after the scan was done showed that the diffracted power was oscillating between 1% and 10%.  Not obvious why.  Environmentally there is a lot of seismic noise in the 1 - 3 Hz band.  A screen shot of the ISS MEDM screen is attached.
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peter.king@LIGO.ORG - 09:27, Tuesday 23 September 2014 (14094)PSL
It looks like every now and then a glitch occurs in the (as monitored) output of both the in and out of loop photodiodes, which causes the diffracted power to oscillate.

I would have to check the schematics but it could be that a voltage regulator on the photodiode board is overheating and therefore oscillating.  The room temperature reported is 22 degC.