It would be helpful to have a comparison of the top mass osem readbacks for optics, comparing this time in the attachment from Nov 15 2025, to tonight. In both of these times PRMI is locked with arms held off resonance with ALS (ISC_LOCK state 50).
Past time for comparison: 15 Nov 2025 00:26:00 UTC, plus or minus 1 minute (but check that ISC_LOCK_STATE_N was 50, and we want closer to the end time of that state 50 time).
Now time to compare: 2026-03-13 00:40:16.264360 UTC, plus or minus 10 mins.
Optics to trend:
[Sheila, Jennie, Jenne, RyanS, Corey]
We have been able to get PRMI locked (with arms held off resonance using ALS). To do this we:
PRMI locked without too much fuss. Since we've effectively also increased the noise on the error signals, it's a bit delicate, and I lost lock twice while touching up alignment. The third lock I was able to go a bit slower when touching up BS and PRM alignment, and we've now been locked for more than 20 mins (aka infinity). Jennie is taking PRCL and MICH OLGs.
The attached image shows all the things that I had changed.
Nothing is in guardian (except maybe some trigger thresholds which should be reverted), and nothing is saved in SDF.
I used the lscparams to change the MICH triggers so I shave put these values back.
Below are OLG TFs I ran from userapps/lsc/h1/templates/PRCL and userapps/lsc/h1/templates/MICH
For PRCL the measurement is shown here where blue is the reference measurement in the tenplate, and red and green are the measurements I took today with different injection amplitudes.
We had to raise the injection in PRCL by a factor of 2.5 ti check the wiggles we can see in the gain between 10 to 30Hz are real.
Here is the measurement for MICH. Not sure we understand either of these yet. More investigation to come tomorrow.
Here is an ndscope with the 'good PRMI ACQUIRE time' we were using to scale gains and trigger levels. That is a prmi where we eventually locked and I picked the highest flash that occurred before we did.
TITLE: 03/12 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
INCOMING OPERATOR: Corey
SHIFT SUMMARY: More alignment work today to recover H1; see other alogs for more detailed accounts of the day, some of which will be posted after this one). This afternoon we are attempting to lock PRMI using the main locking steps in ISC_LOCK, which will give us a better sense of our overall IFO alignment. And it happened for just over a minute!
LOG:
| Start Time | System | Name | Location | Lazer_Haz | Task | Time End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14:44 | FAC | Kim, Nellie | LVEA | N | Technical cleaning | 15:46 |
| 15:05 | FAC | Randy | LVEA | N | Walkabout | 15:30 |
| 15:21 | EE | Fil | LVEA | N | Cable dressing, equipment cleanup | 18:06 |
| 15:31 | AOS | Betsy, Randy | LVEA | N | Moving optics table | 16:03 |
| 15:57 | ISC | Sheila | LVEA | Local | Align ISCT1 REFL path | 17:00 |
| 16:09 | FAC | Kim, Nellie | LVEA | N | Technical cleaning | 17:04 |
| 16:16 | SEI | Jim | LVEA | N | Checking test stand | 16:28 |
| 16:34 | EE | Marc | LVEA | N | Cable dressing, equipment cleanup | 18:06 |
| 16:46 | SPI | Jeff | Optics Lab | Local | SPI characterization | 19:16 |
| 17:01 | SPI | Jim | Optics Lab | Local | SPI characterization | 19:16 |
| 17:20 | TCS | Sophie | Prep Lab | Local | CHETA table work | 19:16 |
| 17:26 | FAC | Randy | X-arm | N | Tumbleweed clearing | 17:50 |
| 17:52 | VAC | Travis | LVEA | N | Working on feedthru kits | 18:11 |
| 17:53 | ISC | Sheila | LVEA | Local | Align ISCT1 REFL | 18:31 |
| 18:22 | VAC | Travis | LVEA | N | Turn off HAM1 cleanroom | 18:25 |
| 18:23 | PEM | RyanC | CER | N | Looking at comtroller box | 18:37 |
| 18:32 | ISC | Sheila, Oli | LVEA | Local | ISCT1 REFL | 20:29 |
| 18:48 | VAC | Travis, Betsy | LVEA | N | Sorting parts kits (Betsy out @ 19:00) | 19:09 |
| 19:44 | SPI | Jeff | Optics Lab | Local | SPI characterization | 23:16 |
| 19:47 | AOS | Betsy | LVEA | Local | HAM1 viewport sighting | 19:56 |
| 19:58 | AOS | Jennie | Optics Lab | - | Looking for camera | 20:22 |
| 21:29 | ISC | Oli, Jennie | LVEA | Local | Checking beams on ISCT1 | 22:26 |
| 21:53 | PEM | RyanC | CER | N | Plugging in DMs to comtrol box | 22:36 |
| 21:57 | ISC | Sheila | LVEA | Local | Checking beams on ISCT1 | 22:26 |
| 22:02 | VAC | Travis | LVEA | N | Looking for parts | 22:15 |
| 22:51 | SEI | Jim | EY | N | Checking wind fence | 23:07 |
| 23:12 | TCS | Sophie | Prep Lab | Local | CHETA table work | 00:05 |
TITLE: 03/12 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
OUTGOING OPERATOR: None
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: CALM
Wind: 8mph Gusts, 4mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.03 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.25 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:
Crew continues recovery work as I walked in: they were working on a pseudo-PRMI and then moved on to CHECK MICH FRINGES. And allof this was after work out on the floor at ISCT1 (see 89485). Much calmer breezes.
Operational Note:
What we can do alignment-wise with ALIGN IFO: Green Arms, PRX_LOCKED (for PRM touch ups). But basically have issues for any IR cavities alignment-wise that need WFS at this point. (Some MICH & SRC states also work, but we don't need them at this point)
[Tom R, Ibrahim] We glued 6x of the QOSEM flags, attaching the lens (D2500277) to the aluminium body (D2500253). This was done using a jig (D2600054) to ensure the lenses were aligned to the body of the flag. We used EP30. Only a tiny drop of glue is required, and was applied directly to the lip of the body using a thin wire. The flags will be left to dry overnight before another batch of 6 will be glued.
Oli, Sheila, Jennie Wright, Ryan Short, Jenne Driggers
Today we aligned the ISCT1 refl and pop paths. First, we remembered that both refl and pop are now on the same top periscope mirror: 84558. Then we realized that the RF signal from PRMI flashes on POPAIR A was unrelated to light on the diode, it didn't go away when we blocked the diode, closed the beam diverter or shutter, or increase when we did get beam on the diode.
We had a bit of difficulty aligning onto the pop diodes because PRMI flashes are infrequent. With 2W PRMI flashes right now, we have about 1/10th of the POPAIR B LF light we expect, and roughly similar low RF18 flashes.
[Commissioners]
As yet another thing to try alignment-wise, I moved the IMC's uncontrolled alignment degree of freedom.
In the attached plot, the y-axis references are set from our Nov 16th, 2025 15:32:00 UTC reference time. During this time today PRX was locked, so the absolute values on the ASC POP QPDs aren't really comparable to the reference time, but since there was no PRX ASC, there should still be changes on the POP QPDs.
I moved MC1 (top left traces in attachment) temporarily to the top mass osem position from Nov 16th while IMC ASC DoFs 1,2,3 were all closed (with a little higher than normal gain) and indeed see that MC3 responds in the expected way for the uncontrolled DoF. For a reminder on the uncontrolled degree of freedom, I'm looking at Jeff's G1301131 page 23. I expect the sign of the yaw on MC3 to be the same as the sign on MC1 (and it is), and I expect the sign of the pitch motion on MC3 to be opposite of that of MC1 (and it is). So, I think that indeed I've moved the uncontrolled DoF (called DOF4 in that slide deck).
When the uncontrolled degree of freedom is moved, I'd expect the pointing of the beam coming out of the IMC to change (I have not calculated by how much). In the attachment, I see that IM4 trans indeed looks like it has moved by about 0.04 normalized counts. I don't see much change on POP A or POP B QPDs - if there's any change, it's extremely small.
Anyhow, I'm not sure there's anything deep here, but perhaps we could go back to this MC1 position from Nov 2025 and then move IM3 to get back to the reference position on IM4 trans and then move IM4 to get back to the reference position on POP QPDs, and see if that changes anything. We've moved more than this on the IM4 and POP QPDs already over the last few days, so I'm not sure that doing so will magically fix things.
Thu Mar 12 10:14:28 2026 INFO: Fill completed in 14min 24secs
We had a couple of power glitches last night, reported by the GC UPS briefly going onto battery power (no reports from CDS UPS)
Both were very brief, 4 or 5 cycles in duration, impacting all 3 phases.
18:16:15 Wed11Mar2026 PDT
21:26:26 Wed11Mar2026 PDT
No sign of any impact on CDS, also HEPI pump controllers look good.
TITLE: 03/12 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
OUTGOING OPERATOR: None
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: CALM
Wind: 31mph Gusts, 20mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.06 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.32 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY: Very windy night with gusts over 50mph, but expected to calm down slightly as the day goes on. Will continue with IFO recovery and beam hunting today.
S. Muusse
Calibrating sensors
I have been working on calibrating the sensors on the cheta tables. When calibrating the power at the pick off that will be used to monitor CHETA power on ITM using beckhoff I was seeing voltage jumps up to saturation at 2.5V as shown in attached plot. This was determined to be due to the auto range on the thermal power head being on. This setting was turned off ( as outlined in T2600081 ) and a range of 0-22mV was selected as max incident power was ≈ 11mV. After which a linear relationship was observed and shown in the attached plot. The laser power vs laser current and the measured V vs laser current have been takem but I havent calculated the responsivity value for the beckhoff screen yet.
Profiling CHETA beam
The beam profiler has been shipped back from LLO to check the alignment against the model and profile the beam size as the second lens is moved by the translation stage. This is how we aim to control the CHETA beam size.
On the Y-table the beamsize was measured over a 60mm distance and the profile was fit with a non linear fit for w0 and z0 setting M2 =1. This is shown in the attached plot.
--- Horizontal (A1) Fit ---
Fit converged: w₀=896.3+/-37.1 µm, z₀=-528.0+/-47.8 mm
Model: w₀=1020.9 µm, z₀=-704 mm
--- Vertical (A2) Fit ---
Fit converged: w₀=977.3+/-40.1 µm, z₀=-449.0+/-40.1 mm
Model: w₀=999.36 µm, z₀=-459 mm
The vertical fit agrees for both w0 and z0 within the fit uncertainties and the horizontal profile was just outside the uncertainty bounds.
Subsequently, the beamsize has been measured along the same positions with L2 at its minimum and maximum displacements on the translaiton stage (±50mm) but this data hasnt been processed yet at will be added in a comment.
As described above the beam was profiled with L2 at different displacements and w0 and z0 determined using a non linear fit. The q from the fit values was then propagated to the ITM and the beamsize at the ITM was compared to the model.
Displacement: 0.0 mm
X:
Fit converged: w₀=896.3+/-37.1 µm, z₀=528.0+/-47.8 mm, wITM = 58.14mm
Model: w0=1020.9 µm, z=725.22 mm, wITM = 52.26mm
Y:
Fit converged: w₀=977.3+/-40.1 µm, z₀=449.0+/-40.1 mm, wITM = 53.21mm
Model: w0=999.36 µm, z=458.67 mm, wITM = 53.00mm
Displacement: 50.0 mm
X:
Fit converged: w₀=794.4+/-25.4 µm, z₀=506.2+/-38.8 mm, wITM = 74.48 mm
Model: w0=818.78 µm, z=537.12 mm, wITM = 64.91mm
Y:
Fit converged: w₀=882.3+/-36.1 µm, z₀=465.0+/-44.9 mm, wITM = 65.7 mm
Model: w0=836.41 µm, z=358.2 mm, wITM = 63.24 mm
Displacement: -50.0 mm
X:
Fit converged: w₀=1164.2+/-38.2 µm, z₀=712.0+/-33.5 mm, wITM = 34.79mm
Model: w0=1321 µm, z=901.17 mm, wITM = 40.54mm
Y:
Fit converged: w₀=1117.9+/-49.5 µm, z₀=456.1+/-34.1 mm, wITM = 40.85mm
Model: w0=1214.4 µm, z=521.06 mm, wITM = 43.36mm
TITLE: 03/11 Day Shift: 1430-2330 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
INCOMING OPERATOR: Corey
SHIFT SUMMARY: Busy day of IFO recovery, mostly in the form of hunting for beams and putting them in their appropriate places. See alogs from others for more detailed accounts of the day (such as alog89469). The wind has been picking up and doesn't look to be calming down until tomorrow, which has been making locking the arms difficult when desired.
LOG:
| Start Time | System | Name | Location | Lazer_Haz | Task | Time End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14:45 | FAC | Kim | Optics Lab | N | Technical cleaning | 14:55 |
| 15:09 | FAC | Kim, Nellie | LVEA | N | Technical cleaning | 15:56 |
| 16:42 | SEI | Jim | LVEA | N | Unlocking HAM1 HEPI | 16:53 |
| 17:04 | TCS | Sophie | Prep Lab | Local | CHETA work | 19:46 |
| 17:04 | Betsy | Optics Lab | Local | Looking at parts | 17:24 | |
| 18:08 | ISC | Oli | Optics Lab | - | BHSS work | 19:46 |
| 18:26 | SPI | Jeff | Optics Lab | Local | SPI characterization | 23:04 |
| 19:08 | ISC | Jennie | LVEA HAM1 | LOCAL | Take pictures by HAM1 | 19:13 |
| 20:53 | SEI | Jennie | Optics lab | LOCAL | SPI | 21:14 |
| 21:49 | CDS | Fil, Marc | LVEA | N | Looking at network cables in susrack | 22:07 |
| 22:56 | ISC | Daniel, Jenne, Jennie | LVEA | N | Checking power supplies | 23:39 |
| 23:02 | VAC | Gerardo | LVEA | N | Taking pictures of cryopumps | 23:25 |
| 23:06 | Camilla +1 | LVEA | N | Family tour | 23:29 | |
| 23:10 | TCS | Sophie | Prep Lab | Local | Collecting connectors | 23:50 |
| 23:25 | VAC | Gerardo | Mids, Ends | N | Looking at cryopumps | Ongoing |
TITLE: 03/11 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ryan S
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
SEI_ENV state: CALM
Wind: 41mph Gusts, 30mph 3min avg
Primary useism: 0.10 μm/s
Secondary useism: 0.31 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:
Got an overall summary on the status of H1 recovery from RyanS.
Whoops! Looks like I was too focused on turning off excitations to post summary last night (left site at 8pmPDT). Summary:
TITLE: 03/11 Eve Shift: 2330-0500 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Planned Engineering
INCOMING OPERATOR: None
SHIFT SUMMARY:
It's been mentioned earlier, but it sounds like there are issues with beams observed on some in-vac sensors, but not on others. This evening I attempted a test commissioners mentioned as they left in the evening: drive RM1 & RM2 at a low frequency and see if one can see anything on ASC REFL A (& B). Made an attempt at this, but not sure my set up was optimal. Turning OFF the excitations before I leave (RM1 & RM2 were driven from roughly 2-3utc---with tests in the hour or two before that).
Very windy night!
LOG:
Fil, Patrick, Jonathan, Erik, Dave:
Fil connected the IOT1 JAC digital camera to the CER POE switch (sw-lvea-aux 0/4).
Erik added the new camera to DNS as h1cam38 (10.106.0.61).
Patrick added this camera as the first cam on h1digivideo6, using the multicast address 239.192.106.67
I added the camera to camera.yaml and updated the camera overview MEDM (see attached).
The camera is currently in a dark location, so no image.
Note IOT1 JAC cameral epics channels are not currently being trended by the DAQ. We will schedule a DAQ restart to add its INI file to the EDC.
Sheila, Ryan S, Jennie, Jenne, Control Room...
Ryan started with green initial alignment and got PRX locked 69467.
Sheila continued yesterdays work looking for signals in the REFL path. Could again get signal on ASC REFL B but not A. She measured PRX OLG, see attached, it's a bit below the reference.
Sheila reset the LSC POP A 45 dark offsets that are hard coded in ALIGN_IFO PREP XARM state.
Sheila set up some sine oscillations on PM1 and RM2 to try to find the beam on the POP diodes in HAM1.
Jennie/e and I then reset IM1,2,3,4 to a November time 2025/11/16 15:34:24 UTC (ndscope on cdsws44 had some issues with this yesterday). And then we walked IM3 and IM4 to get IM4_TRANS and ASC-POP_A back to this time which was quite different IM3/4 alignments. ASC-POP_B ended up not too far off. Plot of now and November attached. In particular, IM3 and IM4 PIT OSEMs are 200 and 400urad different than November.
Ryan and Jenne improved Xarm IR transmission via PR2.
Jennie, Jenne, Sheila, Daniel, Ryan S, Corey,
Summary: We can align the x-arm with IR but not get good signals on several of our HAM1 in-vac sensors, even after several rounds of RM, IM and PR mirrors moves.
We tried going back to the baffle align scripts and this brought us to a different X-arm alignment. In this new alignment we still could not see reasonable signals on LSC-POP_A PD (factor of 10 too small) or ASC-REFL_A and B (signals were a factor of 1000 too small). By 'reasonable' I mean compared to the level at our reference time of 15:32:00 UTC on November 16th. We chose this instead of the time on December 12th that we used as a reference in yesterday's locking efforts as it is before the site power outage which happened on December 4th.
Some things we ruled out:
LSC rack r4, u37 holds the DC refl and pops wfs electronics, this seems fine and is powered.
We also checked R1 and R2 racks that hold the RF and everything seems powered and plugged in.
Daniel also checked that none of the HAM1/3 pico motors had been used since the vent started. This is pico controller A. The only use was earlier today when we tried to improve the pointing from hAM3 to the LSC POP diode but Sheila already undid this.
Jenne also checked the uncontrolled degree of freedom in the mode cleaner (MC2 + MC3) by moving MC1 to its old position from November and letting the WFS move MC2 and MC3. This also did not help.
I checked with Jim (who unlocked HAM1 HEPI earlier today) that HAM1 and 3 should not have moved since November. Both of these should be fine as HAM3 HEPI was never locked during the vent and HAM1 HEPI has not moved appreciably in the DOFs that would affect alignment.
In the afternoon we observed that with PRX fringing, we can see a signal on LSC POP A RF45 that is about 1/10 of what it was in this state in November. We saw that this amplitude did not change when we moved PM1 acros it's full acutation range. We used the PR2 spot move guardian state to keep PRX aligned while we moved PR3 by several microradians, and this also did not change the amplitude on LSC POP RF45. We then redid the baffle PD scripts, which resulted in ITM alignments different by 3-4urad at most, and realinged the vertex to those ITMs. This didn't change the situation of missing signals in the in vacuum pop or the REFL WFS. We do see that we have 3-4 counts on both REFL ASC sensors with 2W incident on PRM now, compared to 3-4 thousand counts in November.
These various efforts leave me thinking that the problem isn't an interferometer alingment problem, but could be an issue with the PDs or electronics, or alignment in HAM1.
We can see the expected light level on both LSC refl diodes for most of these alignments, and we can see clear signals in the POP air diodes, although we haven't aligned those and the signal levels seem a bit small compared to November. While we could proceed with locking with the reflair and popair diodes, we also need to figure out what is happening with the in vacuum diodes.