Reports until 19:33, Sunday 10 June 2012
X1 SUS
stuart.aston@LIGO.ORG - posted 19:33, Sunday 10 June 2012 - last comment - 16:19, Wednesday 27 June 2012(3056)
AOSEM responsivity measurements
[Stuart A, Mark B, Jeff B, Vern S]

Whilst last visiting LHO I was able to quickly make some open-light and one dimensional responsivity measurements using three dirty AOSEMs and a test-jig kindly loaned from Mark. The test-jig has previously been used for characterising BOSEMs, and so had to be reconfigured to accommodate the smaller AOSEM coilformer. More importantly, rather than using the rectangular flag employed for the BOSEM, a ~1" long x ~2 mm diameter cylindrical flag was provided by Jeff B.

A UK production Satellite Box (D0901284) was connected up to the AOSEM under test using a dirty in-vacuum quadrapuss harness (D1000234). The Satellite Box was provided with it's required supply lines via a Satellite Box Testing Board (courtesy of Filiberto). For electronics set-up please see image 504 below. A DVM was used to read-out the amplified voltage signal via the diagnostics port (J4) on the Satellite Box (Pins 9 and 28). Note that, the production Satellite Boxes have a input gain of 242k V/A or 0.242 µA/V (double-ended).

Image 506 (below) shows the opto-mechanical set-up for the reconfigured test-jig, including the translation stages and flag assembly. For these tests, only the responsivity is sought, and therefore a one-dimensional characterisation along the sensitive axis is adequate.

When connected up to the Satellite Box, each of the AOSEMs had the following open-light differential voltage measurements:-

- Unit #1, open-light = 14.75 V (i.e. an open-light photo-current of ~61 µA). Corresponds to ~24k counts
- Unit #2, open-light = 10.14 V (i.e. an open-light photo-current of ~42 µA). Corresponds to ~17k counts
- Unit #3, open-light = 12.19 V (i.e. an open-light photo-current of ~50 µA). Corresponds to ~20k counts

Over a ~0.7 mm operating range, these AOSEMs were found to have the following responsivity (see plot below):-

- Unit #1, responsivity = 18784 V/m (i.e. 78 mA/m).
- Unit #2, responsivity = 13028 V/m (i.e. 54 mA/m).
- Unit #3, responsivity = 15721 V/m (i.e. 65 mA/m).

These responsivity results can be compared with the default value we have previously assumed of ~80 mA/m (see LLO aLog entry 2715).

To summarise, these measurements can be used to validate our assumption of using the AOSEM calibration factor of, 1/(80e-3 [A/m] * 240e3 [V/A] * (2^16)/40 [cts/V]) = 3.2e-8 [ct/m], is consistent for units with open-light counts above Jeff K's goal of 25k.
Images attached to this report
Non-image files attached to this report
Comments related to this report
stuart.aston@LIGO.ORG - 07:58, Wednesday 13 June 2012 (3109)
Please find the responsivity plot showing all three units tested below.
Non-image files attached to this comment
mark.barton@LIGO.ORG - 16:19, Wednesday 27 June 2012 (3281)
Mark Barton and Szymon Steplewski

The responsivities of the three units test by Stuart have a scatter of about 18% (stdev//mean). However this scatter is dominated by a term proportional to the open light voltage (or counts). If you scale the responsivity to an effective OL count of 30000, as is routinely set in the OSEMINF block, the scatter is much reduced (to 0.6%). Therefore the number that it is useful to quote is the average of the scaled responsivities. See attached spreadsheet.

However although this data set is useful for making the above point, it was still taken with the wrong flag (2.5 mm instead of 2 mm) and so should not be considered final.
Non-image files attached to this comment