Reports until 16:51, Thursday 09 March 2017
H1 ISC (SEI)
jim.warner@LIGO.ORG - posted 16:51, Thursday 09 March 2017 - last comment - 21:59, Thursday 09 March 2017(34711)
LSC/HEPI tidal limits mismatch

17 hours into the lock today, we noticed that IMC-F on the wall FOM was steadily drifting off, instead of riding around 0 where it usually sits. After a bit of digging Sheila and Kiwamu found that both X and Y arm LSC tidal HEPI off load had (or had nearly) reached their limits. The limits set in the LSC model were 500 microns, while the HEPI limits are set at 700 microns, so even though the HEPIs were nowhere near out of range, the offload from LSC was being limited. This meant that LSC had to use the IMC to do the tidal control.  After some careful gymnastics Sheila was able to relieve the tidal offset from the IMC to the end station HEPIs, without breaking the lock. The limits for LSC have been updated, but this took us out of observing for ~80 minutes (23:13-0:36 UTC).

Attached plot is the last 4 hours timeseries of IMC-F, X & Y tidal mons (the offset sent to the endstation HEPIs). The first bid dip is IMC-F drifting off because the X tidal has hit it's limit, the jaggy bits are Sheila slowly ramping the offset to HEPI and letting the LSC tidal recover.

Images attached to this report
Comments related to this report
sheila.dwyer@LIGO.ORG - 21:59, Thursday 09 March 2017 (34714)
  • Looking at a few days of data it doesn't seem like this was an unusually large tidal drive.  We checked the PSL temperature and it seemed fairly stable over the time that tidal was drifting. 
  • There is error checking built into the tidal code that worked and gave us a warning about this problem.  TJ is going to (or already has) add this to verbal alarms and maybe diag main so that it will be clear that there is a problem sooner.