Michael, Krishna

Summary: Compact-BRS is deployed in the 'bier-garten' area, next to ITMX, photos attached. The instrument survived the drive unharmed and the electronics appear to be working correctly.

Details: Compact-BRS consists of a cross-shaped, 30-cm-long beam-balance whose angle is measured by two fiber-optic interferometers. The instrument is housed in a glass, vacuum-bell-jar, which has been gold-coated to reduce stray forces from charges. The vacuum pressure has not been low enough to run on the Ion pump for long periods, so we will test it's sensitivity without vacuum. We expect that it's sensitivity at high frequencies will not be affected despite not being in a vacuum.

With Jim's help, we cleaned the instrument and moved it in to the LVEA yesterday. Today, we opened the bell-jar, unclamped the beam-balance and lowered it on the flexures. It needed some minor mass adjustments but was soon balanced and working normally, with a ~19 second period.

After Fil and Mark made us the power cables, we powered up the electronics and the laser (10 mW, 1310-nm, DFB diode-laser) and connected the fiber-optics to the instrument. The PD output looked normal indicating the optical cavities were still well aligned. Tomorrow, after the input/output cables to CDS are pulled, we will start developing control/damping filters.