The FSS had a hard time acquiring lock and staying locked this morning. I had noticed that the pre-modecleaner
reflected spot looked "mis-aligned". The pre-modecleaner alignment was tweaked up, bringing back the vaguely
familiar reflected spot. The reference cavity alignment was also tweaked up but really there was no substantial
improvement in its transmission.
Whilst the frequency servo was trying to acquire, I noticed that the injection locking relock counter had
jumped from ~3 this morning to over 40. In addition the high power oscillator PZT showed a few discrete level
jumps.
Even with the input modecleaner disabled, the laser frequency was being yanked as can be seen from the reflected
spot showing more than the usual two lobes. I tried re-acquiring the FSS lock at a different NPRO crystal temperature.
Previously the slow voltage slider was around -0.0010. Now it is around -0.2630. I have also changed the locking
search ramp to reflect this. Things seem to be more stable at this operating point - the input modecleaner acquired
lock for a start.
If the FSS lock is reacquired at a slow voltage close to zero and the FSS has a hard time maintaining lock, and
things seem better at a different slow voltage, this could be an age-related symptom of the NPRO. Something to watch
out for.