Reports until 02:43, Wednesday 04 March 2020
H1 PSL (PSL)
keita.kawabe@LIGO.ORG - posted 02:43, Wednesday 04 March 2020 (55426)
FSS observation and instruction

Jim called, he couldn't lock FSS for a very long time.

When I logged in, I saw that the FSS auto locker was trapped by a sideband resonance (I assume). It would increase the temperature, hit the sideband resonance, which kicked the servo even though the transmission threshold was not met (because the analog servo is always on when the autolocker is on), temperature goes down (I don't understand this part fully), and the auto locker still scans the temperature up, same thing happens again, and after 5 to 10 repetitions the scan direction flips and the temperature goes down, i.e. the scan never hit the carrier though the setting for the scan should have allowed the autolocker to hit the carrier.

What I did was to

  1. Disable ISS auto locker (which was already done by Jim?).
  2. Disable FSS auto locker.
  3. Press "Manual" from FSS screen. Scan setting screen appears.
  4. Manually scan the temperature using the slider. Find a USB, carrier, and LSB (it doesn't matter which is LSB and which is USB, important thing is that as you scan in one direction, there is a small peak, big peak, and a small peak).
  5. Slowly go back to the carrier position. If your manual scan is good enough you should be able to see that the TPD voltage goes above e.g. 3V for a short while. When that happens you're close enough.
  6. Turn FSS auto locker ON. It should grab the carrier resonance, but it should be oscillating, and autolocker tries to ramp the common gain up and down. The only sign the ramp is happening (which is visible from the FSS screen) is that the auto locker state toggles between 2 and 3 repeatedly.
  7. Set the oscillation threshold to something like 4 to trick the auto locker. It should stop fiddling with ramping, and should go to state 4.
  8. It should still be oscillating (PZT voltage goes large positive and large negative). If not that's great, but if it's oscillating, wait. Waiting for a few minutes might be enough, maybe much longer than that. I turned FSS auto locker off and on once in a hope that that might kill the oscillation but it didn't. But fortunately it immediately grabbled the carrier resonance again.
  9. Once the oscillation stops, set the oscillation threshold back to 0.5.
  10. Turn on ISS auto locker.
  11. Talk to Jim.
  12. Go to bed (OK actually that's yet to happen).