Thomas, Dan Brown
This morning we wheeled out the SRM heater to the north side of HAM5. The CO2 laser cannot be switched on currently until the SOP is complete, the controller for the CO2 is on Thomas' desk. The goal today was to try and align the table to the two steering mirrors and the holes in the SRM baffle. We managed to center on the ZnSe viewport and the first steering mirror. Changing pitch and yaw there we could trace the beam around the edge of the first baffle hole, we were unable to do the same on the output baffle hole. When we believed we were centered correctly the alignment beam could be clearly seen on the baffle on the HR side of the SRM, we're currently unsure whether that should be the case or not. We also do not have a good view of the beam dump from the north side which makes trying to align into it difficult. We still have some alignment work to do here before we are ready.
The north HAM5 door area is now sectioned off with screens between the squeezer table and the clean room, pictures of the area are attached.
Eddie, Corey
Eddie exported the AWC mirrors and beam dump from the SolidWorks model so that I could add them to the Zemax model. The attached .pdf shows the path of the CO2 beam into HAM5.
Aidan confirmed that most of the power will be absorbed by the optic, so only the beam labeld 'AR Reflection' will be present with the actual CO2 beam. I included the other beams (transmitted, HR reflection) in the model since the alignment laser is not absorbed, and thought it may aid with alignment.
Betsy and Jason conducted the initial alignment as documented in:
LHO aLOG 39669 https://alog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/aLOG/index.php?callRep=39669
Is there any reason that this successful initial alignment would not be easily recaptured? Seems that there should be enough adjustment possible to sort this out.
Not really any major issues. It's just awkward to check the alignment using the reflections on the SRM baffles: https://alog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/aLOG/index.php?callRep=41724. We asked Corey to check where we should see spots on the SRM HR baffle so we had a better idea of what we were looking at.
We managed to get the CO2 beam on the SRM and induce a lens using this method yesterday: https://alog.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/aLOG/index.php?callRep=42254